Planning a maternal-fetal medicine program. The hospital employee model.

Communities requiring the services of a maternal-fetal medicine person will need to provide an environment in which the subspecialist is seen as an adjunctive help and improvement to that community. The perception of competitiveness among the obstetric and gynecologic community will need to be avoided and careful consideration given to the type of practice that the perinatologist will develop and the inability of some subspecialists in this field to derive a proportion of their income from the more elective aspects of obstetrics and gynecology normally opened to physicians practicing general obstetrics and gynecology.