Earthside Birth and Wellness Center in Cheyenne is Wyoming’s first freestanding birth center. Last month, they received a national certification from the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers (CABC).
The center is based on the Midwifery Task Force’s woman-centered midwives model of care. Earthside works with low-risk clients who want to give birth outside of a hospital setting. It offers prenatal and postpartum care, birth services and lactation classes.
Sarah Morey is the cofounder and CEO of Earthside. She said they spend a lot of time with clients – visits are typically an hour or more – and discuss everything from nutrition to emotional health.
“Birth can be a really empowering thing to happen or a really disempowering thing,” said Morey. “We want to empower women that they can trust this process.”
Earthside started in 2022, after Morey and her business partner realized there was a need for a birthing center in the state. Morey said there was a demand for midwives in Wyoming, which often strained the few practitioners in the state.
“We’d have a birth in Rawlins and Wheatland due in February. That midwife can only cover a certain amount of births. She’s driving hundreds of miles. They tend to burn out or they move away,” said Morey.
Earthside tries to build a more sustainable model for midwives, providing them with a centralized location and the business management support of Morey and her partner.
The center received its national accreditation last month. During a multi-day site visit from CABC in February, reviewers looked at policies and procedures and asked questions about everything from fire drill documentation to the process for taking vitals during birth. Morey said the process gave important guidance on the safest and most effective systems, and now, the accreditation will play an important role in Earthside’s relationship with insurance companies.
“The biggest plus for that is then a lot of health insurance companies consider that an accreditation [is] a licensing that we can then get facilities fees for, which would be huge for us and our clients,” she said.
Morey said they are currently out of network for most insurance companies. These clients pay out of pocket – the fee for prenatal and postpartum care and birth is $7,500 – and then Earthside’s team will work with them to get any possible reimbursements from insurance.
Earthside does work closely with Wyoming Medicaid, but is currently only reimbursed for provider fees. Morey hopes the CABC certification will help Earthside also get reimbursed for facilities fees.
“As the years go by, providers are getting reimbursed less and less,” said Morey. “What we’re getting reimbursed for, provider fees, is not even enough to pay the staff, let alone all the supplies and equipment.”
Looking forward, Morey views midwifery as an affordable solution to Wyoming’s maternal healthcare desert.
“As these OB clinics are shutting down, then all of a sudden these women aren’t even getting prenatal care. They’re, like, showing up at an ER in labor,” said Morey. “The chances are, they’re more likely to have emergencies. They’re getting life flighted to Salt Lake or Denver or something, and that’s certainly not a cost effective way to do it either.”
Morey said they currently work with three to five clients a month. Their goal is 10 to 15.
