Staff training
Get your obstetric staff ready for the new CMS rules
CMS now requires hospitals and critical access hospitals that provide obstetric services to train their obstetric staff on evidence-based practice and to document it. We help you build the training, deliver it, review the policies behind it and keep the records ready.
What the rules ask, and when
Three dates to plan around
Already in effect · July 1, 2025
Emergency readiness and transfer protocols
Protocols for obstetric emergencies, complications and immediate post-delivery care, consistent with nationally recognized, evidence-based guidelines, and transfer protocols.
In effect · January 1, 2026
Organization, staffing and delivery
How obstetric services are organized and staffed, and how care is delivered, to match the scope and complexity of the services you offer.
Next · January 1, 2027
Staff training and an obstetric quality program
Obstetric staff are trained on evidence-based practice, with new and existing staff on a regular cycle (every two years), and completion documented. Obstetric quality assessment and performance improvement begins.
Dates and wording are from CMS’s final rule (Federal Register, November 27, 2024). Your compliance officer should confirm what applies to your hospital. CMS does not certify individuals. Your hospital writes its own training policy and keeps its own records, and we help you do both.
Staff training
Hands-on drills, run on your own protocols
Low-volume rural units see an obstetric emergency rarely, so skills fade between cases. Reading a protocol is not the same as practicing it. A practicing midwife comes to your unit with training manikins and runs drills in your own rooms, with your own equipment, following your own protocols step by step.
Before the visit
We start with your protocols and your scope of obstetric services, and agree which scenarios matter most for your unit. If a protocol has gaps, we flag them before anyone drills on it.
On the day
Our midwife brings the training manikins and sets up where your staff would really work: the labor room, the operating room, the emergency department. Your nurses and providers run each scenario the way your protocol says to, and she coaches in the moment.
The debrief
After each drill the team talks through what worked, where the protocol was hard to follow and what to change. What we find goes back into the protocol.
Records and the next cycle
You receive competency checklists and completion records for your personnel files, and a calendar that keeps new and existing staff on cycle. Between visits, coaching can continue virtually.
Scenarios might include postpartum hemorrhage, shoulder dystocia, severe hypertension and eclampsia, and an emergency delivery in the emergency department. We agree the list with you, based on your scope of services.
What you receive
- A training plan matched to your scope of obstetric services
- On-site drills with training manikins, run on your own protocols
- Virtual sessions and coaching between visits for OB and ED nurses
- Competency checklists and completion records for your personnel files
- A training calendar that keeps new and existing staff on cycle
- Findings from each drill fed back into your protocols
Policy and protocol review
Check your protocols before someone else does
The training has to teach something, and that something is your own policies and protocols. Our senior midwife reviews your obstetric policies, protocols and consult and transfer pathways against nationally recognized, evidence-based guidelines and against how your unit really runs. Then she proposes revisions for your medical staff and governing body to approve.
You receive a review memo with findings in priority order, marked-up documents and revisions ready for approval. We do not certify compliance. Your hospital owns its policies, and your surveyors and accrediting body judge them.
Recruiting
Midwife to midwife
Training and protocols depend on having midwives to use them. Our senior midwife gets to know your program first: your volumes, your call, your physicians and your culture. Then she helps you recruit, midwife to midwife, which is a different conversation from the one a recruiter can have.
We help you source candidates, write the role and interview, and we mentor new hires through their first year. You make the hire. We help you find the right person and keep them.
Centering
Group prenatal care, designed to be attended
On January 1, 2027, the AMA’s new CPT code set retires the global obstetric package codes. Maternity care will be reported in four phases: antepartum, labor management, delivery and postpartum. Antepartum care will be reported per encounter rather than as one bundle (AMA, CPT 2027 maternity care changes). Under a global package, payment is the same whether a patient attends eight prenatal visits or thirteen. Per-encounter reporting makes each visit count, so prenatal attendance becomes something to plan for rather than assume.
Our senior midwife has hands-on experience with Centering group prenatal care, which is built around regular, longer visits with the same group of patients. Group prenatal care is well studied and safe, and patients rate it highly. Some trials found that participants more often received adequate prenatal care, and the American College of Nurse-Midwives supports the model (ACNM position statement). The largest recent trials did not show an overall reduction in preterm birth, and attendance is the main practical challenge, so we plan for it from the start. Our Case studies page summarizes the evidence.
Our midwife helps you design the program, train the staff who will facilitate groups, and set up the space, scheduling and documentation.
The code change itself applies across payers. How each payer pays for the new codes will vary, so your billing team should confirm what applies to you.
Start with a conversation
Tell us where your obstetric unit is today and which of these dates worries you most.
Request a conversation