Prenatal care in Finland: from primary to tertiary health care?

Traditionally, the Finnish prenatal care system has been based on special maternity centers outside hospitals. In recent years, however, the use of hospital outpatient clinics has increased. The purpose of this study was to describe the use of the clinics and to see whether clinics serve as an addition or as an alternative to maternity centers. We used several different data sources (statistics, documents, interviews, questionnaires). The main source was data on visits for all women who gave birth in Helsinki in a five-week period in 1987. The content of care and means of care delivery differ between clinics and maternity centers. Clinics are technologically and provider-oriented without continuity of care. Clinics are not just referral centers for high-risk mothers; at least half of pregnant women visit them. Ultrasound screening is an important reason for use of the clinic. Background characteristics as well as the outcome of pregnancy were similar among women visiting a hospital clinic a maximum of one time (low users), two to three times, or four times or more (high users). Standardizing for the length of gestation, high users made fewer visits to maternity centers than did low users. Hospital clinic care now seems to replace care in maternity centers, and we found a weak trend toward a pluralistic prenatal care.