We would like to commend the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care and the Ontario Women’s Health Council for their support and cooperation with our requests for information on a number of issues including: numbers of maternity care providers, funding mechanisms, explanations of policies and procedures, and numbers of births and intervention data. [...] Maternity care services are “the foundation for the subsequent health of mothers, babies and their families”.1 The scope of maternity care services in Ontario includes approximately 40% of all live births in Canada2 with the number of births expected to rise within the next 20 years from approximately 131,000 births annually in 2003 to 157,000 in 2024.3. [...] The success of these services – from pre-conception education to prenatal support to post-natal care – has lifelong implications for the health of neonates as they become adults, for women, and for the lives of their families and communities.5 In Ontario, the impact of these services on the health status of our population, the lives and functioning of families, the long-term costs of health servic [...] We believe that this vision will best be fulfilled if the actions of the Office of Maternal and Newborn Health and of all those engaged in the transformation of Ontario’s maternity care services are focused to develop a specific maternity care system based on the following guiding principles: Woman and Family Centred Care • Care across the continuum of maternity and newborn care • Equitable access [...] Throughout the report is the recognition that, in addition to health care providers, the women and families who access services need to have their voices heard in concrete ways in all levels of planning and evaluation; from the planning of their own care to the planning for the models of care delivery, in the education for the providers and in the strategic planning for the province.
- Pages
- 144
- Published in
- Canada
