How safe is general practitioner obstetrics?

The high perinatal mortality among infants of women transferred from general practitioner to consultant care is well known, the implication being that if these women had been booked for consultant care several of the deaths might not have occurred. The findings of this study indicate that booking into a consultant unit did not reduce perinatal mortality and suggest that, where liaison between hospital and general practitioners is good and transfer easy, booking into a general practitioner maternity unit can be as safe for low-risk women as booking into a consultant unit.