A group of midwives — many of whom worked for the recently-shuttered birthing unit at Copley Hospital — are laboring to open Vermont’s first freestanding birth center.
The initiative, called the Green Mountain Birth Center, is in very early stages. But Mary Lou Kopas, a certified nurse midwife who’s helping to lead the effort, said the group is trying to move “as fast as we can” to capitalize on momentum locally and nationally.
“There's a lot of people who are angry about the closing of the birthing center at Copley,” she said. “And two: there's a lot of awareness nationally about the maternity care problem in the United States, and so there's a lot of people looking to contribute to solutions.”
The group hopes to open up shop in 2027, and has just started fundraising efforts. Copley, which officially shuttered its birthing unit on Nov. 1, has already donated some furniture and supplies to the nascent center.
Freestanding birth centers, which are typically run by midwives, offer a midway point between a homebirth and a hospital birth for low-risk deliveries. Research indicates they offer a safe alternative to the hospital for uncomplicated pregnancies, and can lead to fewer interventions like C-sections.
Birth centers are also typically cheaper than hospitals: One multi-year federal study recorded average savings of over $2,000 to Medicaid for birth center deliveries.
“It's not the solution to everything, but it does help with access. It does help with cost and also with good outcomes and good patient satisfaction,” Kopas said.
Vermont is the only state in the Northeast without any freestanding birth centers, and midwives have been trying for decades to open such a facility in the Green Mountain State. Earlier this year, advocates had a major breakthrough: State lawmakers made it much easier for birth centers to open.
Previously, opening a birth center required a “certificate of need” from the Green Mountain Care Board — a regulatory process that allowed hospitals, which have historically viewed birth centers as competition, to weigh in on whether such facilities should exist. Act 19, which was signed into law in May, replaced that more onerous requirement with a licensing process.
Alison Fischman is a certified professional midwife who helped advocate for the legislative change, and now she’s part of the group trying to open the center. She said growing awareness about positive outcomes at birth centers helped the law finally pass.
But she stresses communities shouldn’t rely on birth centers to stand in for the labor and delivery units that are closing in rural hospitals.
“Although that is something to celebrate — that we were able to get it passed — I think that it's misleading to say that it is going to solve that lack of resource in the community,” Fischman said.
Birth centers aren’t equipped to handle high-risk deliveries, she noted. And they are typically located near a hospital, with transfer agreements in place, to make sure patients can quickly get emergency medical care if the need arises. That’s why the midwives behind the Green Mountain Birth Center are looking for property somewhere in Waterbury, just a 20-minute drive on the highway from the Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin.
But while Fischman said the closure of Copley’s birthing center is a loss, she believes some good might come of it.
"I feel like sometimes that's how change happens,” she said. “Something big happens, something big goes away, and then you make something new from it."
