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Post by medic09 on Mar 1, 2013 9:58:29 GMT -5
This must be a new thing. I know that when my daughters were born in the 80s, we privately paid our OB doc to be available so that we wouldn't have to use whoever was in-house at the hospital. It was a common, though luxury, practice. I *thought* that it was possible with midwives, too. www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=304811 |
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Post by achot on Mar 2, 2013 16:41:04 GMT -5
I'm totally clueless, my births at Hadassa Har HaTzofim were smooth and a positive experience using only the staff (midwives and doctors) who were on call at the time, as were for my daughter in law. I can not think of any reason for anyone to hire a private midwife or doctor, even with high risk pregnancy and complicated labor and yes, I have seen both.
I dont know if it is really illegal or not, although I understand why it would not be a good thing for public hospitals to have the options to hire private as it would be disruptive and create a situation of haves and have nots in the same building. A bigger problem would be caused when good nurses, midwives and doctors would go "private" only and provide their services to those elite who can afford them, thus depleting resources from the general pool. If the 'cream of the crop' went private, the message will become that in order to get good care you must pay privately. As a religious person, and one who lives in Israel, this is antithetical to my beliefs.
While I am a believer of capitalism, I dont believe that health care should be affordable only to the extreme wealthy.
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Post by medic09 on Mar 3, 2013 0:44:33 GMT -5
Achot, shavua tov. As for your first observation, we and our friends didn't use the privately paid service of the OB because we didn't trust the on-call staff. We did it because after so many months of dealing with a physician and creating a relationship, my wife (and some of her friends) just felt more comforted and supported if the man delivering the baby was the same familiar face who had provided some of the prenatal care. Her mother offered to pay for this luxury to make her daughter more comfortable, so why not.
I agree with you that as far as we could tell, the overall quality of staff and care was good and we would have been fine had we used the on-call in-house staff.
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Post by achot on Mar 5, 2013 6:06:07 GMT -5
Medic as your experiences were in the 80s and mine in the 90s, I am sure that you cant judge one on the other. Paying your OB privately was (as you wrote) 'common' in the 80s when modern medicine was still being perfected in Israel, and can not be compared to the situation today. In my day no one took doula's and today almost all new mothers look for a doula. It is an up and coming field and I know nurses who have retrained for it.
Today the biggest problems are concentrated in the area of lack of rooms for the new mothers and mothers to be. Too many women find themselves before and after labor lying in a hall till a bed is available- It is so uncomfortable, embarrassing and unacceptable. In addition there is the serious problem of multiple resistant infections probably exacerbated by the over stuffing of units. Neither of these problems can be fixed with private doctors/midwives.
OTOH, here in Israel, new mothers are not 'thrown out' after 24 hours like I experienced in the states, (I gave birth to twins and less than 24 hours later was asked to give up my bed and finish recuperating at home while my cuties were still in the hospital- I had to travel q3H/24-7 to nurse them, even on Shabbat!).
Most new Mothers are treated to 3 days at the hospital and more if they need it and encouraged to go to a Beit Hachlama for recovery and much needed rest.
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