The new Birth Center Bill is gaining grumpy support. Grumpy, because though hospital birth practitioners support Senator Berglin’s bill there is a lot of behind scenes gossip that having birth centers will take the patients from area hospitals. Hospitals are concerned about loss of income.

Even hospitals compete with each other as noted in this article:

Park Nicollet doctors won’t work at new Maple Grove hospital

Its doctors won’t see patients there

By Jeremy Olson
jolson@pioneerpress.com

Updated: 04/16/2009 06:16:55 AM CDT

Park Nicollet announced Wednesday that its doctors will not care for patients at a competing hospital in Maple Grove when it opens this year.

A statement from the health system listed better care as a reason …

Unmentioned in the statement was the financial incentive for Park Nicollet — which like many health systems is laying off staff and taking other steps to curb economic woes — to keep its patients in-house.

There will be a change in birth once birth centers are set up in every county of the state. Healthy women will be able to choose to give birth in a setting that emphasizes normal birth. What a relief to be cared for by midwives and physicians who see birth as a normal event, not as an emergency needing expensive management.

The first birth center to open will be right in the Methodist Hospital neighborhood – Paula Bernini Feigal is opening a new Morning Star Women’s Health and Birthing Center on Excelsior Blvd in St. Louis Park walking distance from Methodist.

Paula may not get many referrals from Methodist medical staff at first, but once birth centers become the norm, it will seem reasonable and right to care for women who are ill, have risks, or who desire to be numbed for birth and refer healthy women who want a more active involvement in their birth to the birth centers.

Women who have to pay out of pocket for their births may choose the lower cost birth care at birth centers. Many women, women who wish to, but don’t Have to, will find birth center birth supportive of early family adjustment, breastfeeding, and women centered birth. To compete, hospitals are likely to begin listening more to birthing women. Competition in a free market can promote improvement in services.