With women, for a lifetimeTM Commendation
Womancare, Inc.
By Lynne P. Dollar, CNM
Womancare, Inc. is a CNM owned service. It was opened in1988 as a result of the malpractice crises that drove MD's out of Obstetrics due to increasing rates. I have been a CNM since 1980 and as such have constantly given full service care to the women of St. Petersburg, Fl. I was the first CNM to get privileges at Bayfront Medical Center. When I founded Womancare, Inc. as a free standing nurse midwifery practice with hospital privileges, I went through a long ordeal from the medical staff and finally persevered in getting the wording at the hospital changed to supervised rather than employed as a requirement for privileges.
I have always believed that if midwifery is to flourish then we must train our replacements. As a result of that belief, Womancare has taken students for almost every year. We had one of the first University of Florida “home based” students. We have had students from Kentucky, Oregon, Florida, CNEP and the Stonybrook, NY classes.
Womancare began taking Medicaid patients in the 1980’s when none of the private offices would take them as patients and the clients only had the option of the Public Health units. It was my service that contracted with the hospital to open a community based clinic serving our mid county. That area was surveyed by Healthy Start and found to be a area of very high infant morbidity and mortality. As a result we have lowered the amount of women underserved. We have recently been asked to contract with the Jail for inmate prenatal care. We offer free car seat classes on site. We will continue to seek out the underserved and provide them with midwifery care.
I, Lynne P. Dollar, Beth M. Langdon, and Sharon M. Turpin are members of ACNM. Womancare pays each CNM’s dues to the professional organization.
Probably the most telling part of our practice is our other employees, our medical assistant has worked with me for 18 years, and our office staff has been with us for 9 years. Our patients always have access to the CNM because we do not employ voicemail. Our office always has a human on the other end of the phone. After hours the CNMs take their own calls through the miracle of call forwarding to our cellular phones. We truly believe that you should have access to your provider 24 hours a day.
