Missoula Notebook
No More Deliveries: Missoula Birth Center Will Become Primary Care Clinic
By Sutton Stokes, 1-22-09
The Birth Center. Photo by Anne Medley/NewWest.Net.
Community Medical Center will purchase the assets of the Missoula Birth Center, lease the space from the building’s owner, Jolyn Montgomery, and convert the facility into a primary-care practice, under the terms of an agreement reached today. The new practice, which will be operated by Community Medical Center’s clinic, Community Physician Group, will no longer offer birthing-related services. New patients hoping to begin prenatal care there will be turned away, and expecting patients must make other arrangements for their deliveries, says Community Medical Center’s director of business development, Karen Sullivan.
A hospital press release quotes Community Physician Group President Frank Reed as saying that “a robust list of family medicine options” will be offered within weeks.
“We hope to retain the women’s health care focus at the new clinic,” says Sullivan. “The new arrangement doesn’t preclude us placing an obstetrician there or offering gynecological care. But it will be a clinical setting, which means no births.”
Sullivan says the hospital plans to sign a five-year lease of the Birth Center space from Montgomery, the widow of the Birth Center’s founder, Dr. Lynn Montgomery, who died of a heart attack in October. Dr. Montgomery’s sudden death put the center’s future in jeopardy and stirred anxiety among past and current patients, some of whom organized a petition and letter-writing campaign to influence either Community Medical Center or St. Patrick’s Hospital to take steps to preserve the range of services the center offered under Dr. Montgomery’s direction.
But with today’s agreement, Community Medical Center becomes the only medical facility in Missoula offering childbirth services.
“We recognize the community’s desire for a natural birthing option, and we want to make clear that that option remains available at Community Medical Center,” says Sullivan, who explains that the hospital currently allows deliveries overseen by certified nurse midwives, provided an OB/GYN is available for emergencies. Community Medical Center is also breaking ground on a new infant’s and women’s health center, scheduled for completion in 2010. The new center will offer birthing suites similar to those at the Birth Center, says Sullivan, alongside birthing options traditionally found in hospital settings.
Sullivan says that negotiators initially pursued the option of continuing deliveries in the Birth Center space, but this option was abandoned over difficulties related to securing a physician to permanently oversee the center’s operations.
Current patients needing referrals can call the Birth Center at 549-0978 or Community Medical Center at 327-4221.
Here’s the full press release:
Community Medical Center to provide family medicine services at Birth Center location
Community Medical Center and The Birth Center in Missoula have reached an agreement under which CMC will provide family medicine services at The Birth Center on Reserve Street.
The family medicine/primary care services will be operated by CMC’s clinic, Community Physician Group (CPG), which is working to address the primary care shortage in the region. CPG President Frank Reed, who noted that a shortage of primary care providers is a serious national issue, said CPG has recruited five new primary care providers since September, and intends to recruit to CPG as many as seven more over the next half-year.
The agreement between CMC and The Birth Center comes after the untimely October death of Missoula obstetrician/gynecologist Lynn Montgomery, M.D., the founder of The Birth Center. Under Montgomery’s guidance, The Birth Center provided natural birthing services to the community.
Missoula’s obstetrics/gynecology community has been working since October on accepting Montgomery’s patients, and CMC continues, as always, to provide natural birthing and obstetric services at the hospital. For referrals, Dr. Montgomery’s patients may call The Birth Center at 549-0978 or CMC at 327-4221.
“We are committed, as we have been for decades, to providing hospital services to women and their children” said CMC President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Carlson. “Dr. Montgomery was an excellent obstetrician and gynecologist, and CMC and Missoula’s OB/Gyn community are committed to continuing an excellent standard of care to our community.”
Reed said “a robust list of family medicine options” will be offered within weeks at the Reserve Street location. Medicare and Medicaid patients will be accepted, as they are at all CPG clinic locations.
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Please consider one of the many fine midwives in Missoula. There *are* options still available, even if CMC has done their best to limit them.
It's disgusting.
Not to be a busybody, but it looks like you left off ".com" from your email address, so the correct one would be . Thanks for reading and commenting!
-Sutton
I, for one, look forward to what Missoula's educated, well respected, and safe midwifery community will come to offer in the future. I know my business will only go to the hospital if I truly need surgery- not if I have an uncomplicated, healthy, and natural pregnancy and delivery. Thanks, Jeanne and your colleagues, for all the effort, time, dedication and support.
And for Community- this was a shame, and a waste. I think the hospital will come to see this move as a mistake and perhaps more importantly, a public relations nightmare. Only time will tell.
Jeanne, Dennie, Katie and all the nurses, Lindsay, and the ultrasound technician, you were all wonderful. You still are. Thank you for all you did for me and my new family and for Missoula. And good luck Jeanne, if anyone can do it, you can!
John Calsbeek
On a non-sarcastic note though, I hope the Birth Center is able to come back and this option is available at some time in the (hopefully) near future to expectant mothers who want this alternative.
As far as insurance goes. I looked into my insurance company's policy to not cover home birth and discovered that it was based on false information and misconceptions. After a few letters and meetings I managed to have them change the policy and get my last birth covered. The hard part was convincing myself I could do it and that it was worth the effort.
Home birth costs much less than you'd think. So until there's a new birth center - I recommend looking into your options with a thoughtful eye and fierce determination to protect your right to have the birth you desire. A state law protects that right.
And support the new birth center!
It is so myopic of Community to be unsupportive of midwife-delivered babes. I am encouraged by Jeanne's commitment to reopen elsewhere but, in the meantime, how can we get Community to embrace Jeanne's incredibly skilled profession as a midwife instead of marginalizing her work as support staff?
I know home birth will be my next choice but should I transfer to the hospital I want the person I trust by my side.
Nici Holt Cline
Steve Carlson
President, CMC
i know that this was a business decision for both mrs montgomery and community medical center. and while i am disappointed, i cannot blame community for doing what they can to eliminate their competition. nor do i blame mrs montgomery for doing what she needed to do in this case. i can only imagine what a difficult time this has been, and how difficult of a decision.
in direct response to mr carlson's comment. thank you for the invitation. i would love to sit down with you, and will be calling your office to schedule. but as a woman who is currently 5 months pregnant, i am heartbroken that the option to birth at the center has been taken from me. it feels like a very personal violation. and while there are plans for a similar center to be constructed in the coming years on the community campus, i am now in a very uncomfortable position of finding a new plan that i am comfortable with now, since there is unlikely to be any such facility available to me this spring. i am grateful that i am not much closer to birthing at this point (with less time to respond to the change) and my heart goes out to those families who are.
jeanne, katie, anne and birth center staff, thank you for your service, your skill, your dedication, your kindness and your advocacy. you have touched the lives of many so many families. i see the disintegration of the birth center as a huge loss to missoula and to the medical community. but i also see that the potential to have any or all of you available to begin a new birthing center, or for home birth is something worth celebrating, and something i will gratefully support!
I am encouraged by Carlson's invitation. However, this does not change the fact that once again Community Hospital has reasserted its monopoly over "delivery" in this community. Community's plans to add appropriate labor & delivery rooms are too little too late for those of us that are having babies NOW. For shame. It seems like an afterthought or concession. Where was Carlson's invitation when they were kaboshing the Birth Center?
If Community's cesarean rate wasn't atrocious before (31% in 2006 according to hospital sources), we should expect to see another rise from 2009 forward. Many of the women who would have achieved vaginal (and/or natural) deliveries at the Birth Center will experience increased medical management (intentionally and unintentionally) in birth at the hospital under the careful supervision of surgical specialists.
Additionally, the closure of the Birth Center will put stress on the professional midwifery community (homebirth) with an influx of women who would otherwise have delivered at the Birth Center and ultimately would have been more comfortable there than at home. Women "having" to have their babies at home in order to avoid the hospital are not optimal candidates for homebirth.
I highly recommend reading "Born In the USA" by Dr. Marsden Wagner. If that book doesn't wake this community up to the preposterous nature of the medical childbirth industry, then nothing will.
I gave my first birth at Community Hospital 26 years ago, followed by a home birth 2 years later. Both were good experiences, with the outcome of delightful, healthy children. I would have chosen another home birth, given the right health situation. All that said, the setting can be anywhere you are comfortable. The birth center offered a median between the home and hospital. Why can't the hospital offer a similar setting?
Further research has determined that Jeanne's correct email is .
Meanwhile, speaking of updates: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/community_medical_center_president_to_meet_with_birth_center_supporters/C564/L564/
I will partner with anyone interested in healping Jeanne bring a birth center back to Missoula; I will do whatever is necessary to make that happen. My friends from Boston, Washington, D.C., and other metropolitan areas are jealous of my amazing labor and delivery experiences and I hope this community can pull together to again offer the most amazing facility most have ever heard of!
Just as an update. Katie moved to Billings to work with the midwife group there. Anne is in Iowa with another midwife doing hosital births.
As for me, I've had my own practice since February 09. Located at 2516 S. 14th street W. phone number 541-7115, I will soon have a website.
The closure of the birth center was devestating. I felt we were betraying women and their families by not performing a service they signed up for. Women who were due had to quickly find an MD or CNM. Their frustration was felt by all the midwives who were helpless. I've always said that I will rebuild a birth center for the community. I have a site and a plan, just need the capital. I hope by 1/2010 to open the doors (hopefully sooner).
Thank you again for everyone who has continued to support my practice.