Dr. Ryan Spencer:
It's unique to each situation. There are some who may have one obstetrician in a community. However, if that obstetrician has been there for quite some time, they may be quite adept at working with, potentially, midwives, family medicine doctors — not only in their community, but outlying areas — to provide appropriate care. The challenge becomes, that I've seen, is when you've got a situation where things change quickly. You have a few obstetric providers and you go down to another, a smaller number or one. You tend to have a larger patient population. It's harder to take care of all those patients. You might not have enough staff to make callbacks in a timely manner, like you'd like to fit them in a schedule in a way you'd hoped to. Also, if you didn't lose all your obstetric providers, then you're just left with trying to help those patients find someone else somewhere who's able to take on their care. And that can be very challenging for both the people trying to provide that information, but also for the people who need to receive that care.