On Monday, Jack Barto, the CEO of New Hanover Regional Medical Center, met with the North Carolina Friends of Midwives to discuss the hospital’s policy that requires a certified nurse midwife’s supervising physician to be physically on-site at the hospital during delivery. The hospital’s policy, midwife supporters say, creates an unnecessary challenge for midwives to practice in the region.

The policy is in a place for the rare situation when the comprehensive team, which includes a physician needs to save the life of a mother and baby, said Martha Harlan, NHRMC director of public relations and marketing in an August interview when the policy issue first arose.

Barto passed the policy decision over to the obstetricians on staff at the hospital, who will meet in October, said Kirsti Kreutzer, a local midwifery advocate, who attended the meeting on Monday.

“The hospital will support whole-heartedly any decision the department of obstetrics makes,” Harlan said on Tuesday. The hospital wants to try to keep an open dialogue between the department of OB/GYN and the North Carolina Friends of Midwives, she said.

If the obstetricians choose to keep the policy in place, Barto said he will broker a meeting between the doctors and the midwives, Kreutzer said.

Throughout North Carolina, certified nurse midwives have a mandatory supervisory contract with a physician. Most hospitals and birthing centers in the state do not require a midwife’s supervising physician to be on-site. New Hanover Regional Medical Center is one of the few hospitals in the state that does.

Harlan said Barbara Buechler, director of the Women’s and Children’s hospital at New Hanover, has looked into other hospitals’ policies across the state. But, “it’s hard to compare because of the volume of patients and because we are a training hospital,” she said.