Prenatal Care: A Vital Need

The deplorable lack of prenatal care in Orange County has been evident for some time, but data disclosed at a recent forum in Garden Grove shows the problem is growing.

A panel headed by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who has been seeking more state funds for prenatal care, was told that:

Last year 1,650 pregnant women were turned away from Health Care Agency clinics in Orange County because of overcrowding, and 2,312 pregnant women received prenatal care late or not at all (40% over 1983).

The number of obstetrician/gynecologists who accept Medi-Cal patients dropped from 64 to 45, about one-fifth of the number of obstetricians in the county.

Babies born to mothers without prenatal care are five times more likely to die in their first year of life than those born to mothers who received adequate care.

County infant mortality rates have risen.

Last year, 38% of the babies born at the UCI Medical Center to mothers who did not receive adequate prenatal care were infants with low birth weights, which increases the risk of mental and physical disabilities that often require expensive lifetime care.

The cost of a patient in a neonatal intensive care unit is $2,300 a day; when all costs are considered, remedial treatment costs nine times as much as the sort of prenatal care that would make remedial care unnecessary.

The problem is not unique to Orange County. It exists throughout the state and nation. But it is bad here and getting worse.

If humanitarian reasons don’t prompt action to end the senseless and needless death and suffering of infants and mothers, the economics of the penny-wise and pound-foolish approach of paying as much as $9 for remedial care instead of $1 for prenatal care should.

The county’s new fiscal year budget does include funds to provide prenatal care for about 500 more women this year. But more is needed, much more, especially from state and federal programs that fail to recognize the rising birth rate and still use outdated population formulas that shortchange growing urban areas like Orange County. The economic and medical facts are irrefutable: the needlessly heavy and avoidable costs to the community--in money and lost lives--come from not providing adequate prenatal care.