New law allows midwives to buy some medications

AUGUSTA – Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed into law a measure that authorizes Maine pharmacists to provide certain medications to certified professional midwives for administration to mothers and newborns during home births.

Certified midwives – sometimes referred to as “lay” midwives to distinguish them from registered nurses with additional midwifery credentials – typically help women deliver their babies safely at home rather than in a hospital or other medical setting.

The medications specified in the new law include drugs that induce labor, injectable vitamin K to control bleeding, antibiotic eye drops for newborns, numbing agents to reduce discomfort when repairing skin tears after delivery, and oxygen. Midwives often obtain these medications from pharmacies through “friendly” doctors who write prescriptions for them or other means. The new law is intended to grant them the autonomy of purchasing the drugs independently.

But some pharmacists have questioned the legality and ethics of dispensing directly to midwives.

“If someone came in here now for Oxytocin [to induce labor] or vitamin K, I’d need to see a prescription,” Bangor pharmacist Bill Miller of Miller Drug said when asked about the new law on Wednesday.

To address pharmacists’ concerns, Baldacci has in a letter directed Anne Head, acting commissioner of the state Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, to develop new rules to ensure that “significant and meaningful safeguards” are developed allowing pharmacists to legally and responsibly dispense to certified midwives. The measures are to include a process for verifying midwives’ credentials, a system of recording and reporting what drugs are sold to midwives and a process for midwives to report when they administer the drugs to their patients.

The governor ordered Head to establish an advisory group to help develop the new rules and to seek guidance from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Baldacci further ordered that the acting commissioner submit a report and any recommendations for improving the system to his office by Nov. 15, 2009.