Midwifery consulting for rural and critical access hospitals
We midwife midwifery programs.
A midwife stays with a family through pregnancy, birth and the weeks after. We stay with a midwifery program the same way: through the design, the launch and the first year, when it needs the most support. A practicing senior midwife designs the program, and a business and data partner builds the financial and market case from your hospital’s own public data.
How we work
Attending a program from start to first year
Prenatal
Design
We build the program with your hospital’s own numbers: scope of practice, pathways, protocols, the financial case and the team.
Labor and birth
Launch
Drills on your protocols, midwives found and credentialed, and coverage while you hire, so launch day goes the way the plan says.
Postpartum
The first year
Telehealth case review, refresher drills and a mentor for new midwives, because a new program is most fragile in its first months.
The problem
A rural obstetric unit is standby capacity
Rural obstetric units are mostly standby capacity: nurses and call coverage that must be there whether or not anyone is in labor. At roughly 100 births a year, volume is real but unpredictable, so a fixed headcount sits idle one month and is stretched the next.
Hospitals lose obstetrics through physician burnout, nurse turnover and failed recruiting. Each closure pushes volume and risk onto the neighboring hospitals.
Protocols, referral pathways, staffing and the financial model have to be designed together, for the hospital in front of you. That is the work we do.
Services
Start where your hospital is
No midwifery program yet
Program Build
Design a midwifery-led service from scratch with your own numbers: scope of practice, pathways, protocols, credentialing support and a launch plan.
A program that stalled or lost its midwives
Program Revamp and Rescue
Find out what broke, fix the model and rebuild the team, with a credible restart plan you can take to your board.
A unit that needs skills and backup
Nurse Training and Coaching
Drills, competency checklists and coaching for OB and ED nurses at low-volume hospitals, with telehealth backup between visits.
We also help with recruiting, mentoring for new midwives, bridge and locum coverage, and community outreach. See all ten services.
New federal rules
Is your obstetric staff ready for January 1, 2027?
CMS now requires hospitals and critical access hospitals with obstetric services to train their obstetric staff on evidence-based practice and to keep records of it. We help with the training, the policy and protocol review behind it, and the midwives to carry it.
Who decides
Each executive needs something different
- Chief Executive Officer
- Owns the decision. We give the CEO a plain account of what the program is and what it takes.
- Chief Financial Officer
- Tests the numbers. The financial model is built from your public board books and state data, with assumptions you can check line by line.
- Chief Medical and Chief Nursing Officers
- Decide whether it is clinically safe and workable. They get protocols, scope of practice, and consult and transfer pathways to review and own.
- Chief Human Resources Officer
- Cares about finding and keeping midwives. Recruiting support and midwife mentoring are available as their own services.
Why Catchment Maternity
A working midwife and your own numbers
A practicing midwife designs the program
Our senior midwife keeps practicing, which is how you find out whether a protocol is any good.
Your numbers, not generic benchmarks
We build the case from your hospital’s own public board books and state data.
You keep what we build
We are consultants. The protocols, pathways and plans are designed so your hospital runs the program after we leave.
Start with a conversation
Tell us where your obstetric unit is today. We will tell you plainly whether and how we can help.
Request a conversation