Birth Centers
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While some women with low-risk pregnancies choose to labor and birth at home, others are more comfortable working with a midwife at a birth center. Birth centers specialize in creating a homelike environment and offering many of the same advantages of a home birth: personal attention, warm and caring environment, family-driven care, safety without unnecessary medical intervention.
Physicians, midwives or a combination of the two may run birth centers, but birth centers are not part of a hospital. Licensure for freestanding birth centers is provided by individual states. Accreditation for birth centers is optional but is provided by the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers.
