HOT BEDS: When UCI’s birthing center opened...

HOT BEDS: When UCI’s birthing center opened in Anaheim last December, its aim was to ease crowding at the university hospital’s Medi-Cal maternity wards. Lately, eight of its 30 patients a month are upscale women with private insurance. “Word is getting out,” says B. J. Snell, the center’s director of nurse-midwifery. “They don’t want anesthesia and they don’t want to be strapped in bed.” The center’s lure: It offers a “low-tech, high-touch birth” with coaching and massage by nurse-midwives, and costs $1,800 for normal care, versus $4,000 or more in a hospital.