The Queensland Government has announced that in the second half of 2024, having a baby at home will be a funded option for women who live within 30 minutes from the Sunshine Coast University Hospital (SCHHS). As this doesn’t cover the majority of the Noosa State Electorate, Sandy requested from the Queensland Minister for Health, the reasoning for this as our residents would also benefit from these services. The following was provided in response:
The service is currently being set up by a group of skilled clinicians including Queensland Ambulance Service, Neonatologists, Midwives and Medical staff across the SCHHS in collaboration with maternity consumers.
As Queensland is one of the last states in Australia to provide a publicly funded home birthing service, the SCHHS has a significant amount of learnings and literature from other states to inform an evidence-based approach to this new service.
As a new service, quality and safety are important to ensure the experience for mums, babies and families is safe and allows for timely transfer in the event of an emergency.
The service will commence with a determined travel time of within 30 minutes of the Sunshine Coast University Hospital, based on evidence from other states ensuring a safe travel distance from the home birth location to the hospital.
Most publicly funded birth services use transfer time rather than kilometres to determine this safe distance.
The locality-based approach to the commencement of the service is to ensure the SCHHS can assess the demand for the service with the ability to expand into the future.
As the exemplar site for publicly funded home birth in Queensland, the SCHHS will evaluate our processes as we go so the service can be easily replicated by other health services across the state.
We have asked for a map to be prepared to capture the radius of eligible areas for greater clarity and the department is currently working on this. Sandy will also be following up on the future expansion of the program, mentioned in the above response, including what this would potentially look like. Once new information has been received, we will update to Noosa 360.
Further Information
More information on the program is available at www.sunshinecoast.health.qld.gov.au/about-us/news/homebirths-for-sunshine-coast-mothers
Direct advocacy regarding this can be directed to the Minister for Health via health@ministerial.qld.gov.au. Please cc our office in via noosa@parliament.qld.gov.au and forward any response you receive to us.
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