Antenatal visits : A comparative study between integrated and shared antenatal care

A comparison was made of the number of antenatal visits made by 96 women receiving integrated antenatal care in an experimental community clinic with 100 women receiving traditional shared care from two control practices. Most women from the experimental group were cared for within the traditional framework of visits whether or not they had experienced problems or complications in their pregnancies. Women from the control group made higher total numbers of visits per pregnancy and also more visits to the hospital source of care. Most women from both groups were satisfied with the number of visits they made although some women from the experimental group thought that they made too few visits in early pregnancy and some women from the control group thought that they made too many visits to the hospital source of care. A policy for keeping the number of hospital visits to three, where appropriate, should enable specialist obstetricians to spend more time with 'high risk' patients.