COVID-19 and beyond – changes to provision of maternity care and future plans in Victorian maternity services

BACKGROUND: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rapid service changes were made to maternity care provision in Victorian maternity services. From March 2020 many routine face-to-face visits in pregnancy were replaced by telehealth (telephone or video), along with changes to routine screening. Many providers plan to continue these changes despite a lack of evidence to guide practice. We aimed to describe the changes in maternity care provision, understand the perceived impact and explore services’ future plans regarding these changes. METHODS: A population-based cross-sectional study of midwifery managers of all Victorian public and private maternity services was conducted between March and October 2021. Questions explored health service characteristics, changes to maternity care delivery, telehealth practices, perceived impact of changes, and future plans. RESULTS: Fifty percent of services (34/68, 27 public and 6 private) responded, with broad representation of location, birth numbers and size of service. Around 50% of all pregnancy visits became telehealth. There were multiple combinations of which visits were face-to-face and which were telehealth. No visit was conducted face-to-face by all responding services. Visits most likely to be face-to-face were at 39 and 40 weeks gestation (65%). For telehealth appointments there was an ad hoc approach to advising women on routine screening, e.g., measuring blood pressure (11% did not advise at all), fetal growth (26% – no specific strategy) and fetal heart rate (15% – no specific strategy). Over half (52%) would consider maintaining telehealth post-pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Even in a single state there is great variation in telehealth timing, when pregnant women should have face-to-face visits, and what routine screening is maintained. In light of emerging evidence of some potentially poorer clinical outcomes associated with telehealth in pregnancy, these findings need to be considered.