By opening a freestanding birth center, perinatologist Steve Calvin is determined to make maternity care more satisfying for women and cost effective.
By Kim Kiser
Standing on a sidewalk on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, Steve Calvin, M.D., is at the intersection of high-tech and high-touch health care. Behind him is the 100-year-old Victorian home he bought two years ago and turned into a freestanding birth center—a place where women can deliver their babies in much the same tradition as their great grandmothers. Across the street, a crane is busy at work on construction of the Mother-Baby Center on the campus of Children’s and Abbott Northwestern hospitals—a place where women will have access to some of the most sophisticated maternal and neonatal services in the Twin Cities.
Although setting up a birth center across the street from two tertiary care hospitals could seem ill-conceived, the project is well thought out. As a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who has worked at Abbott Northwestern for 23 years, Calvin has attended to some of the most challenging pregnancies and deliveries. Over the years, he observed that most mothers and babies didn’t need the kind of care a hospital could provide. He notes, for example, that 80 percent of women who have a hospital delivery get an epidural block. “Epidural blocks have been a godsend for many women; but there are concerns that we’re overdoing it,” he says, adding that it may make them unable to feel the urge to push. “If a mom is in pain, the nurse says, ‘Let me call the anesthesiologist and get an epidural,’ rather than sits down with them and says, ‘You’re at 8 cm and you’ll soon be complete and able to push.’”
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