Montgomery County health officials are searching for part-time obstetricians to deliver babies for mothers without insurance who have trouble finding doctors willing to take on their cases.
The $1.4 million annual program, Project Deliver, has been in existence for almost 20 years and essentially hires doctors employed elsewhere to temporarily treat low-income pregnant women at three hospital clinics in the county, according to spokeswoman Mary Anderson.
“The county contracts with them on a per-patient basis,” she said. “It’s to get private physicians to help with these patients.”
The jobs that are being advertised on local Web sites indicate that the payment for the program comes to $90 an hour and that the job is handled on an on-call basis. Hired doctors also have their medical liability insurance paid for by the county.
At present, nearly a dozen obstetricians are needed, and Anderson said the openings are fairly constant — as is the need.
Richard Helfrich, deputy health officer for the county’s Department of Health and Human Services, which runs Project Deliver, said the service came about in 1990 because there was a “crisis” situation in terms of attracting suitable obstetricians who would deliver babies for uninsured women.
Not much has changed about the service since then, except for the number of participating women, which has tripled from about 800 a year to nearly 2,500, Helfrich said.
Also, the program is now applied in three hospitals — Holy Cross, Montgomery General and Shady Grove. The number of hospitals participating over the years has fluctuated from one to as many as five.
Montgomery County also has a related program that delivers prenatal care to uninsured mothers-to-be in the three local hospitals.
Helfrich said Project Deliver aids women in that program during the final phase of their pregnancies.
“It’s an opportunity for the physicians to a) get compensated for their work,” he added, “and b) get their liability covered for them.”
