02/08/2019
Hello Inspiration Family!
We at Inspiration have a lot of changes going on. You may have noticed or heard about some of them. I wanted to touch base with everyone and get you all updated!
As you may have heard, we decided last year to downsize our practice. This was for a few different reasons. The main reason was a financial need to downsize. The second and more personal reason, was to take Inspiration back to its roots as a small, concierge practice, that really put its clients first.
Over the years that I have owned Inspiration we have had to make many tough decisions in a climate not conducive to good health care for pregnant mamas or their families. I believe that maternity care should be fundamental to a health care system and not a big business model. Last year we decided to put our mamas first and downsize our physical location. This allowed us to still take Medicaid regardless of how long those insurance companies took to pay us or at the lower rates of reimbursement.
We always want to put the needs of our patients first, especially for those most vulnerable and in need of great, compassionate midwifery care. Florida Medicaid has cut our reimbursements rates consistently every year. Commercial insurances like Cigna and United Health Care are taking, on average, 5 months to pay for services we provide to our clients. Since commercial insurance cannot be billed until the baby is born, this means that for the average mama with insurance, we will wait over 1 year for payment for services rendered, while still paying our staff and bills at Inspiration. This has been an on-going battle for quite some time, but we are seeing significant delays in payment getting worse as time goes on. A significant amount of our resources are being spent on simply getting paid for what we do every day. This is not unique to Inspiration or even to midwives. Doctor practices have the same struggles as well. Insurance is a Billion Dollar business, and it doesn’t like to pay its bills without some work on our part!
January 1st, 2019 Florida Medicaid cut our reimbursements rates again. The combination of long payment delays, lack of affordable healthcare coverage for families, uninsured/underinsured clients and Medicaid cuts has put me in the very unfortunate position of having to make some serious changes to our practice so that we may keep the doors open and midwifery services available to those who want it.
As of February 1, 2019, our dearest Meg Folsom has moved on to work for another practice. This was a decision made based on the needs of her family and ours at Inspiration. She is still and always will be a part of Inspiration, just in a different way. She is near and dear to hearts and we are sad to see her leave us on the day to day business end. She has our respect and admiration for years of incredible services. We look forward to keeping her in the loop as a birth assistant and of course for Placenta Encapsulation!
In addition, our wonderful Midwife Laura Nathan, has started her own practice! Her home birth practice is Modern Orlando Midwifery. This has been Laura’s plan from the beginning and we always knew she would fly off to have her own practice someday. She chose to jump start her future in 2019. We could not be prouder of her and the work she is doing! She also will always be a part of Inspiration.
We will be introducing one new face, Kat Whitley :O) She is our Birth Assistant and has been with us for several months. She is an Inspiration mama and has come to join our practice as Mary’s assistant. Mary, Ally, and I will be staying with Inspiration of course, and keeping our practice alive and well and serving families as we can.
We will be making some changes as we go along and prepare for what is coming next. I am working at political levels and with Insurance reps and the Insurance commission to hold Insurance companies accountable for their actions and long delays. This will not be an easy road over the next year, but I am hopeful we will make great progress and again be able to provide even more expanded services through the birth center!
We hope that if you have any questions or concerns about these changes or anything that you see happening – please reach out to us. We are very open about our practice and want every single Inspiration family to feel loved, welcomed, supported and mostly importantly HEARD. So please talk to us anytime! We are here for you!
