Florida Medicaid and Home Birth Midwifery Care | Tampa Bay Midwife

Medicaid coverage has been an ongoing saga in the medical world for decades now. We have written previously about it many times and discussed barriers to care for folks as well as barriers for providers in accepting it as payment. The privatization of Medicaid put the nail in the coffin for a lot of providers. Not only has reimbursement decreased, the private model has made it a dog and pony show to get paid. They require credentialing, contracting, and endless amounts of paper work to access the measly sum we are granted for services rendered. Many of our colleagues across the state stopped accepting Medicaid all together because of this. That means that there are fewer providers who accept Medicaid coverage which means the real people hurt are clients. We know this affects outcomes and we can’t help but think this is EXACTLY why the state made this move to privatize. To save money, no matter the cost.

Currently Medicaid pays $1681 for TOTAL CARE. This barely even meets our cost to provide care after our expenses to practice legally in this state. We can only bill for 10 prenatal visits and 2 postpartum visits. Even if we do more visits (a normal, routine pregnancy generally has about 12-14 prenatal visits and in our practice we routinely see folks 3 times or more postpartum) we are not compensated for them at all because of the mandated Medicaid fee schedule.

Our practice is committed to supporting all families. We have always offered sliding scale pay-per-visit options, accepted Medicaid, and keep our fees as reasonable as possible to be sure high quality care is accessible. Currently we accept Sunshine and Simply MMA plans which cover our prenatal and postpartum care options 100%. This means clients can have the same personalized, one-on-one care our home birth families enjoy with delivery in the hospital with the on-call nurse midwives or hospitalist OBs.

For our clients wishing to utilize Medicaid for homebirth, there are a few out of pocket fees that are not billable to Medicaid. These are available on sliding scale for those families who qualify so that care can remain accessible to all. We also must limit our Medicaid client load each month so be sure to get in contact ASAP if you plan to utilize this option.

We never want finances to be a barrier to care so we are here to help you navigate this, just reach out!