Team-based postpartum and infant care models: effects on service use, outcomes, and health system costs in the one year after birth

The months following childbirth may be difficult for new parents caring for a new baby (or babies) while recovering from pregnancy and birth. Team-based maternity care draws on the strengths of interprofessional teams (physicians, midwives and allied health) to improve patient care and outcomes and is a current provincial priority in British Columbia (BC). Midwifery care provides frequent post-delivery contacts, at-home care, and on-call support during this critical postpartum period. There is a growing trend in BC towards informal team-based arrangements where midwives support mother-infant dyads after physician-attended birth. In other settings, up to 18% of postpartum individuals and 8% of newborns visited the emergency department in the postpartum 6-week period. We will examine whether interprofessional team-based partnerships in which midwives provide postpartum care is associated with hospital service use (emergency department visits, hospital readmissions), maternal or infant outcomes, and health system costs in British Columbia. Findings will inform knowledge users in health policy and system leadership positions by evaluating this aspect of team-based maternity care applied in the postpartum period.