Perinatal Health Care In Canada

Canadians benefit from an excellent perinatal health care system. Despite some mixed messages in lay and media circles about the status of perinatal health care in Canada, studies by the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System and members of the Canadian Perinatal Programs Coalition show that fetal, infant and maternal mortality rates in Canada have been consistently declining in recent decades and are among the lowest globally. However, some problems persist as evidenced by disparities in maternal, fetal and infant mortality and morbidity. 

Perhaps the single biggest challenge confronting the perinatal health care system in Canada relates to regionalization of perinatal care. Regionalization of perinatal care is defined as ‘a method that rationalizes existing health care services to ensure that each pregnant woman and newborn infant is cared for in an appropriate facility’. Such regionalization, with hospitals categorized into tiers of obstetric and neonatal service, was embraced and implemented in Canada in the late 1960s and 1970s, although there has been no formal evaluation of the system in recent years. 

The objective of the Team for improving perinatal health care regionalization includes an evaluation of the functioning of hospitals under this regionalized framework. The Team includes a pan-Canadian coalition of approximately 70 researchers, health care providers, perinatal program managers and knowledge translation partners and is funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant (PER-150902).