Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District’s (ISLHD) medical co-director maternity and women’s health Dr Keith Allenby said the necessary governance structures and model of care have now been endorsed by the board, and the model has now been implemented at the hospital.

“Having a Level 1 model of care at Milton Ulladulla Hospital means that we will now be able to expand our pre and post natal services for local families to seven days a week; with dedicated midwives looking after mums and their babies before and after they give birth at Shoalhaven,” he said.

“It’s great news that we’ve now completed the first integral component of re-establishing a safe and appropriate maternity service for local families.

“We certainly know the community’s expectation is to restore birthing services at Milton Ulladulla, but as we’ve said from the very beginning, the process of developing any level of service is going to take a significant amount of work.”

Dr Allenby said ISLHD need to ensure all factors required for a long-term, sustainable and safe level of care for local families are met during the planning stages. 

With the Level 1 service now in place the Steering Committee and Model of Care groups will focus on the evaluation and development of plans for the next step in the process of further developing the local maternity service.

“The next steps will involve a much larger piece of work than the Level 1 re-establishment due to the complexity of the clinical and organisational arrangements that need to be considered in order to move the service forward,” Dr Allenby said. 

The work needed to take the service to a Level 2 is expected to take six to eight months, meaning a regular birthing service at Milton Ulladulla Hospital does not look likely until at least 2018.

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