Community birth transfer toolkit: A California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative toolkit

This California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative toolkit provides an actionable framework for improving transfers from planned community births to hospitals. It brings together community midwives, hospital teams, EMS, doulas, families, and advocates to promote safe, respectful, equitable, and coordinated care. The guide explains legal and regulatory context, best-practice transfer protocols, communication expectations, patient education, debriefing, simulations, quality improvement, and sustainability. It emphasizes shared decision-making, cultural humility, midwife autonomy, clear roles, standardized handoffs, continuity of care, and keeping parent and newborn together when possible. Teams can adapt its meeting structures, training resources, drills, and tools to their populations, systems, and needs.