Women's Healthcare Practice Extends Services to South Suburbs: Beth Helme-Smith promotes benefits of Certified Nurse-Midwife model in women's health

(Mokena, IL) August, 2013 – Beth Helme-Smith, certified nurse-midwife at OMG Women’s Healthcare, is opening an OMG WH clinic at 19621 LaGrange Road in Mokena, IL on October 7, 2013. The model of care established at OMGWH Hinsdale utilizes the services of a consulting physician and trained Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNM), licensed health care practitioners educated in the two disciplines of nursing and midwifery and consulting physicians. OMG Women’s Healthcare in Hinsdale is one of the country’s only private medical practices in the United States to staff Certified Nurse Midwives and doulas.

Helme-Smith, resident of the area, hopes to extend the standard of midwifery care currently available to women in Northwest Chicagoland to the south suburbs. “It’s important to me to bring this type of women’s healthcare back to my own community,” says Helme-Smith, “Dr. Panzica and I were partnered together 10 years ago and he provides good quality healthcare with holistic elements as well.”

Helme-Smith and Wendy Pryor, CNA, will helm OMG Women’s Healthcare in Mokena in the office space of Dr. Paul Panzica, OB-GYN. Dr. Panzica is dual certified in internal medicine and pediatrics and like Helme-Smith, follows a psychosocial model of women’s health. Patients of OMG Women’s Health in Mokena and Dr. Panzica can access services from a lactation consultant or a doula, in addition to the care of a Certified Nurse-Midwife and OB-GYN.

Few midwives currently serve Chicago’s south suburbs. Midwives advise pregnant women in prenatal visits, oversee labor, and provide services to teenage girls, older women, and anyone seeking healthcare advice. “The holistic approach to childbirth and women’s healthcare and the education and empowerment of women in the community is vastly different than the current model in the south suburbs,” said Helme-Smith, “All women deserve to have a voice in their own healthcare and have the chance to have an individualized birth experience tailored to their needs rather than a protocol-driven delivery.”