title: Babies at risk. Can the prenatal care initiative be saved?
abstract: My husband and I named our lovely daughter Faith because of the enormous obstacles we faced in getting her here safe and sound...I almost gave up hope that I would receive any help at all...I called Physicians Referral at least a dozen times, saying, please give me leads to possible people who accept Medicaid. The answer was a flat "nope."...I went to the bookstore and bought a couple of books on how to take care of myself during pregnancy...I am angry that not only every physician I asked refused to see a Medicaid patient, that they would also not refer me to the one facility within a 100 mile radius that did...I began going there (with nurse-midwives at Monroe Maternity Center) in January and I can tell you I received the best treatment, the only drawback was driving an hour and a half one way to receive each prenatal check up... Faith may be the most important person in the world to me. She may be the apple of her daddy's eye, but Tennessee and the majority of the medical community could care less about whether she lives or dies...
authors.affiliation: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.
authors.forename: D E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Jesse
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D011295:Prenatal Care; D013714:Tennessee