Women’s health care at the Franciscan Medical Clinic-Vashon has expanded with the recent addition of a certified nurse midwife.

Elina Frumkin joined the clinic this month and offers gynecological care for adolescents through adults, while specializing in care for women before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth.

Frumkin, who lives on Vashon, works primarily with Franciscan Women’s Health Associates at the Pearl Place clinic in Tacoma, but as of this month, she is also working one day a week on Vashon.

Island doctors used to provide prenatal care and delivered babies, but that changed several years ago. Now, Frumkin said, she looks forward to revitalizing those services and making them available to island women again.

“Hopefully that will pick up. That is one of my favorite parts of my job,” she said.

Her pregnant patients will deliver at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, a hospital with a “midwife-friendly” culture,  she said, where low-risk women are not attached to monitors, are able to labor in water and have as many people as they wish in the room, including a doula.

St. Joseph is also launching an out-of-hospital birth center, which is expected to open in May. Women with very low-risk pregnancies will have the option of delivering there, she noted.

Frumkin works in a collaborative with 14 midwives at five satellite clinics, and they share patient care.

“We do try to catch the babies of women we see prenatally, but it does not always happen,” she added.

Frumkin has been practicing for two years and said she most appreciates the variety of her work. In the course of a day in the clinic, she said she might tend to a woman with painful periods, listen to a baby’s heart beat, evaluate a breast lump and then start someone on contraception.

“And catching babies never gets old,” she added.

In an interview with The Beachcomber, Frumkin stressed that she wanted to correct the misconception that because the clinic is owned by a Catholic entity, providers cannot provide birth control.

“I offer counseling on all forms of contraception, including all three types of IUDs and Nexplanon (birth control that is implanted in the arm) and emergency contraception as well,” she said.

Kimberly Valencia, who owned the Vashon Women’s Health Center for six years, will start at the clinic next month, and Frumkin says they might share some of their patient load.

“Kimberly has a lot of patients who love her. I hope when they call that they might see me too,” she said.

Currently, Frumkin works at the island clinic on Wednesdays. Next month, services will expand further when lactation consultant Debi Crawford will begin at the clinic and work on Thursdays. Crawford’s services will be available to all women, not just those who are patients at the Franciscan clinic.