Babies are a Billion Dollar Business

Billion Dollar Business

Has anyone seen the movie “Business of Being Born?” Ricky Lake has been a monumental spokesperson for the money-making backdrop systems present in the United States compared to other countries. Our society has created a booming business to be part of. The healthcare system has created assembly-line maternity systems for women to deliver their babies. Midwives are here to change that! We need more midwifery-owned and operated birth center, home birth practice, women’s health clinic to support families back into the normal birth era.

Babies and Birth is a business that needs to be profitable to stay open to helping families, but we don’t need to make it a high-volume, quantity practice. Insurance is paying more and more for quality. Preventing complications, lower cesarean section rates, and higher breastfeeding rates are very negotiable tactics to use when discussing the “value” of your service and fee schedule rates. 

Midwives can make great money taking care of families.

Know the insurance codes to bill for care. Bill for more than global maternity care. Make sure you are billing for tub rentals, birth center facility use, newborn care, breastfeeding support, supplies used during birth, and primary care visits done for issues outside of pregnancy like cold symptoms.

Give credit to the value of your services. We are seeing 5-7 women due each month versus 10-15 births, like typical doctors providing obstetric services in the hospital. I have seen a few doctors have 40+ women due each month in a solo practice! How does that doctor know his patients and provide individualized care?

When good-quality, safe care is provided, midwifery practices become very, very busy.

 We need to focus more on the business aspects of midwifery to keep our lights on and compete with our major hospital systems by buying things in bulk and creating an assembly line for an efficient birth process. Quality takes more time and allows midwives to see women for longer visits. When fewer women are seen in a day, the revenue needs to come from other places. Add a boutique shop in the office. 

Join forces with a chiropractor to cross-refer patients and cut down on your marketing budget. Create a wellness center where multiple practices are under one roof, sharing utility costs, maintenance on the building, and growing a community of like-minded practitioners for families to drive far distances to seek out!

Consider a birth center franchise. Hybrid today’s big health care system with midwifery personalized care? Have a massive assembly only on the backdrops (centralized administration support for billing, legal, staff education, obstetrician hired to be Medical Director of all facilities as a full-time job, and bulk buying of supplies), while keeping the mission at the forefront of personalized, non-rushed care during visits and birth. 

Find multiple business investors who share the same passion for birth center philosophy as you. Keep up with today’s healthcare trends while still preserving why each one of us became midwives: safe, high-quality pregnancy care.