MedStar Washington Hospital Center

Medstar Washington Hospital Center is the largest private hospital in Washington, D.C. From 2019-2020, NIRH partnered with Medstar and Community of Hope, a group working to combat homelessness in D.C., to implement a practice of providing immediate postpartum LARC at the Family Health and Birth Center, with hopes of providing a model for other free-standing birth centers. Their multi-pronged approach included standardizing operations, training midwives, and creating evaluation mechanisms to ensure sustainability. MedStar Washington Hospital Center also developed a toolkit on this process and lessons learned to benefit midwife-led birth centers across the country.