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Welcome to Mountain Midwifery Center !

Welcome to Colorado’s only birth center - licensed, accredited and freestanding.

Mountain Midwifery Center provides a full range of midwifery services for clients in the Denver Metro Area, the front range, across Colorado and even further locales. Services offered include:

  • Well-woman care for women of all ages, 
  • For birth, the center provides prenatal care, natural birth, water birth in Aqua Doula tubs, nutritional counseling and more,
  • Educational services that complement birth, such as classes on childbirth, newborn care and breastfeeding, and
  • Lactation consulting.

If you're wondering, Mountain Midwifery Center truly is Colorado's only birth center.

  • Licensing - MMC is the only facility licensed as a birth center. All other licensed facilities calling themselves birth centers are licensed as hospitals.
  • Accreditation - MMC is the only facility accredited by the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers to standards set by the American Association of Birth Centers.
  • Freestanding - MMC is the only freestanding, out-of-hospital birth center in Colorado.  

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2009 Staff Gathering
What is a Freestanding Birth Center?

A Birth Center is designed to be a “Maxi-Home” not a “Mini-Hospital.” We strive to allow women to labor and birth in a true home-like environment while providing one-on-one care that helps ensure superior mom and baby outcomes. The Birth Center is not just pretty birth rooms, it is an education-intensive program of care. From your first visit through the birth of your baby and beyond, the Birth Center is designed to facilitate healthy choices for families.

Why Choose the Mountain Midwifery Center?

The Mountain Midwifery Center believes that pregnancy and birth for most women is a state of health. We trust that your body can grow, birth and breastfeed your baby. The staff provides individualized care and an education plan that includes nutrition, exercise and stress-reduction recommendations. In addition, you have access to an extensive lending library of birth books and videos. You may also browse through our online Resource section and periodically check our Mountain Blog for birth center news and articles regarding pregnancy and natural childbirth.

Videos of the facility

Independent video about MMC and our style of care: 

 This video was shot, edited and presented by Colorado Public News, a part of Colorado Public Television. We had no editorial control, but we think it is a balanced and beautiful presentation of why pregnant moms consider MMC and other birth centers like us.

http://www.kbdi.org/news/index.php/2009/09/04/video-a-lower-cost-alternative-to-traditional-hospital-childbirth/

See our video of the facility:

Unfortunately the video is getting fairly dated. Until we get a digital video camera of our own, here's what's NOT in the video... Our new birth room, the "tent room" that is adorned with silks and tapestries, small but warm and intimate. Our new Offices & Education suite, with large area for groups and classes and 2 exam rooms most describe as "bright and fun" (as exam rooms go). And finally, our growing little store of herbal remedies, allopathic cleaning supplies and some other stuff we highly recommend for the wellness of women and newborns. If you're curious, please attend an Orientation.

Orientations:

Orientations are recommended for prospective Maternity clients.
Come see what the Mountain Midwifery Center is all about! At the free orientation you will tour the center and learn about our approach to natural birth, waterbirth and midwifery. You'll have the chance to ask questions and discover if Mountain Midwifery is right for you.

No RSVP is required, feel free to just show up.  Visitors are always welcome at other times, but we may not be able to offer a tour during our busy clinic hours.  An orientation is the best way to visit us.

  • Thursday, February 18 at 5 pm
  • Monday, February 22 at 5 pm
  • Saturday, March 6 at 12:30 pm
  • Wednesday, March 10 at 5pm
  • Thursday, March 18 at 5pm
  • Sunday, March 21 at 1pm
  • Saturday, March 27 at 11:30 am

We offer classes and lactation consulting to clients and non-clients alike:
For more about the services we offer and how to schedule your visit, please visit the
Services
page. Read more about Colorado’s Only Freestanding Birth Center!

Paying for your care:

Insurance Coverage: 

  • In-Network (professional services, facility fee or both): Cigna, United, Aetna, Sloan’s Lake / Cofinity, TriCare, PacificCare, Golden Rule and the list is growing.
  • CHP+ and Medicaid: We are in-network as providers only. The facility fee is the client's responsibility. For CHP+, we are in-network with the State Managed Care Network, but not the CO Access private plan.
  • Out-of-network? We are happy to accept out-of-network payers for clients using out-of-network benefits. In many cases, past clients have found us to be a more affordable option than hospital-based providers, even with the higher deductibles and coinsurance percentages in their out-of-network coverage. This affordability is driven by our lower cost facility and very high rate successful natural birth.

Reasons to consider MMC even if you have an out-of-network plan:

  • Facility fee includes waterbirth. - Birthing tubs are available to every client with every midwife. We do in-water monitoring. Most hospital practices have no or only limited availability for waterbirth and aren’t comfortable with in-water monitoring procedures.
  • One-on-one, direct support of moms in active labor. - At MMC, a CNM and RN support every birth. In hospital care, labor and delivery nurses are assigned a group of rooms and one-on-one direct suppport just isn't possilbe in most cases.
  • Higher chance of a natural birth. - For clients making it to term with us, we have a 90% natural birth rate (approximate). Of our transfers to a hospital-based provider, only half result in C-Section; our overall C-Section Surgery rate varies around 5 to 6 %
  • Lower expected cost. - In addition to saving our mom and babies from C-Section related complications and long recovery times, our high natural birth rate and lower facility cost dramatically lower the cost of the total bill. The C-Section surgery rate at local hospitals ranges from 30 to 40 %. Consider this example:

Expected Cost, MMC compared to hospital (a simplified example)
-Insurance Plan:

  • In-network benefits: 500 deductible and 10% coinsurance 
  • Out-of-ntwk benefits: 1000 deductible, 20% coinsurance

-Costs (professional & facility fees), Hospital is In-Network, MMC is Out-of-Network:

  • Natural birth at hospital: $10,000.00. Cost to patient = 500 + 1000 = 1500.00
  • C-Section birth at hospital: $25,500.00. Cost to patient = 500 + 2500 = 3000.00
  • Natural birth at MMC results in total bill of $3900.00. Cost to patient = 1000 + 580 = 1580.00

-Expected Cost (Sum of probability of outcome multiplied by cost of outcome):

  • In this scenario, if the patient transfers to hospital for care, the patient pays $750 to MMC under her out-of-network deductible.
  • Expected Cost if patient chooses MMC: 0.90*1580.00 + 0.05*(1500+750) + 0.05(3000+750) = 1722.00
  • Expected Cost if patient chooses Hospital: 0.35*3000.00 + 0.65*1500.00 = 2025.00
 
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