Publicly funded homebirth in Australia

Publicly funded homebirth in Australia: a review of
maternal and neonatal outcomes over 6 years

Authors: Christine Catling-Paull, Rebecca L Coddington, Maralyn J Foureur and Caroline S E Homer, on behalf of the Birthplace in Australia Study and the National Publicly-funded Homebirth Consortium

From the Medical Journal of Australia (Med J Aust 2013; 198 (11): 616-620.):

Results: Nine publicly funded homebirth programs in Australia provided data accounting for 97% of births in these programs during the period studied. Of the 1807 women who intended to give birth at home at the onset of labour, 1521 (84%) did so. 315 (17%) were transferred to hospital during labour or within one week of giving birth. The rate of stillbirth and early neonatal death was 3.3 per 1000 births; when deaths because of expected fetal anomalies were excluded it was 1.7 per 1000 births. The rate of normal vaginal birth was 90%.

Conclusion: This study provides the first national evaluation of a significant proportion of women choosing publicly funded homebirth in Australia; however, the sample size does not have sufficient power to draw a conclusion about safety. More research is warranted into the safety of alternative places of birth within Australia.

These results are consistent with the large Dutch study (de Jonge et al 2013) comparing maternal outcomes from (low risk) homebirths with a comparable group of (low risk) women giving birth in hospitals in the Netherlands concluded that:

"Low risk women in primary care at the onset of labour with planned home birth had lower rates of severe acute maternal morbidity, postpartum haemorrhage, and manual removal of placenta than those with planned hospital birth. For parous women these differences were statistically significant. Absolute risks were small in both groups. There was no evidence that planned home birth among low risk women leads to an increased risk of severe adverse maternal outcomes in a maternity care system with well trained midwives and a good referral and transportation system."

The two Victorian publicly funded homebirth programs, at Sunshine and Casey hospitals, were not included in this study, which took data from 2006-2010. 

For more discussion about risk and homebirth, go to villagemidwife blog.