Stacy Vandenput MARA CPM LM

12/19/2025

⚡ Something important is happening with Wisconsin’s electric grid — and most people haven’t heard about it yet.

Wisconsin regulators are considering approvals for large, hyperscale data centers that would add enormous, non-stop electricity demand to our grid.

These aren’t just “big buildings.” A single facility can draw as much power as a small city, 24/7. And because Wisconsin is part of the MISO regional grid, decisions made here affect reliability and costs across the Midwest.

A few questions we should all be asking:

• Who pays for the new power plants and transmission lines needed to support these facilities?
• What happens during heat waves, storms, or emergencies when the grid is already stressed?
• Should everyday residents and small businesses absorb higher rates so private hyperscale users can plug in?

We've heard about the environmental issues around data centers but this is also about reliability, emergency preparedness, and fairness for utility ratepayers. And unfortunately, bottom-line effects often get more attention than ecological impacts.

I’ve submitted comments to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission asking for stronger safeguards: better grid impact reviews, firm power or capacity obligations for massive new loads, and clear protections against cost-shifting onto the rest of us.

🗣️ Public comments matter. If this concerns you, I encourage you to respectfully share your thoughts with the PSC commissioners. These decisions shape our electric system for decades.

Silence often gets treated as agreement. This is worth paying attention to.

12/14/2025

If parents are to blame for their adult kids' struggles,
are they also to be credited for the good?

12/04/2025

Today I received a certified letter from UnitedHealthcare inviting me — a licensed Certified Professional Midwife (CPM)— to join their network as a doula, with “no credentialing required.”

The letter made several things clear:

👎🏾It was a mass-mail recruitment campaign disguised as “official” through the use of USPS certified mail.

👎🏾Their new doula program requires no verification of training, experience, or certification: simply filling out a form.

👎🏾Meanwhile, insurers continue to refuse reimbursement for licensed midwifery care, or pay midwives so far below the value of their work that it becomes unsustainable even where coverage technically exists.

👎🏾Midwives who are included in insurance networks still face chronic underpayment, systemic barriers to fair compensation, and requirements that are OB-centric and inappropriate for community-based practice.

👎🏾All of this is happening during a time of national OB and RN shortages, rural maternity unit closures, and escalating gaps in access to maternity care.

I want to be very clear: I deeply respect doulas and the vital support they provide. Their work enriches birth and fills gaps in a system that is often cold and fragmented.

But we cannot ignore the pattern:

Insurers are rapidly expanding doula programs, without standards, and while simultaneously underpaying, restricting, or excluding the licensed midwives who actually provide clinical maternity care.

This reflects a broader national approach: patch the OB/RN shortage with the least expensive, non-clinical support role, instead of investing in a clinical workforce that outcomes data overwhelmingly supports.

There is a real solution, and it’s not a mystery. The United States desperately needs community-based midwifery en masse, supported by exquisitely integrated collaboration with OB, pediatric, and perinatal specialists. This model improves outcomes, reduces costs, and expands access, but insurers have resisted implementing it for decades.

Supporting doulas does not require diminishing midwives. But insurers must stop treating doulas as a substitute for midwives, and stop treating midwives as if they are optional, peripheral, or interchangeable with non-clinical roles.

If the goal is genuinely to improve maternal and infant health, especially in underserved communities, then equitable reimbursement, accurate scope recognition, and meaningful inclusion of midwives are essential.

Both doulas and midwives matter deeply, but they are not the same.

We can honor both while still calling out the structural inequities shaping maternity care today.

Do any of you want to weigh in?

Jennie Joseph
Ginger Breedlove
Suzanne Arms
Amy Gillilandphd

11/06/2025

November 6, 2025

An essential read from the New York Times today on the widespread use of continuous fetal monitoring and the growing role of AI in interpreting those data streams.

From a records and information management perspective, this isn’t only a clinical problem, it’s a data governance problem.

Every second of electronic fetal monitoring generates protected health information (PHI) that must be stored, transmitted, and interpreted responsibly.

These data are often streamed to remote “monitoring hubs,” sometimes located dozens or hundreds of miles away, raising new questions about chain of custody, secondary data use, HIPAA compliance, data security, and record retention.

Historically, the paper monitor strips, sometimes annotated by nurses, were treated as short-term records, often destroyed within a 30 days despite their evidentiary and medico-legal value. The move to continuous digital monitoring expands this risk exponentially: terabytes of sensitive biometric data now pass through commercial platforms with unclear retention, access, security, and destruction policies.

If we reframe this issue as a records problem, all stakeholders, clinicians, patients, administrators, and vendors — share exposure.

Hospitals that view continuous monitoring as a legal safeguard may, in fact, be multiplying their liability through insecure data flows, ambiguous custodianship, and noncompliance with retention laws.

Sometimes, the data meant to protect can itself become the risk.

,

---
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/health/electronic-fetal-monitoring-c-sections.html

10/28/2025

Want to know what's really scary?
Check Comments
⬇️

10/24/2025

While the snow may not arrive for a little while, we are preparing to support Parkers at Safe Place Parking. Help folks stay warm while navigating the changing season!

Donations are accepted at Wise Women Gathering Place at 2615 S Packerland Drive, Suite B in Green Bay during office hours Monday - Thursday.

Thank you for supporting Safe Place Parking!

10/20/2025

This is an excellent 20-minute piece on living with botched circumcision, approached with humor and a candid look at the author's struggles.

I appreciate the perspective that the circumcision problem is uniquely American, which aligns with the historic narratives about early US medical propaganda around this unnecessary and brutal procedure.

I am inclined to believe those who theorize that some expressions of misogyny arise from feelings of being let down by one's mother due to the brutal act of neonatal circumcision. It instills terror and inexpressible pain when the infant is supposed to be navigating the critical stage of trust. The matrix, the one safe person, life-giving source, is not able able to protect the child from such an ordeal.

It's not an excuse for hatred, but understanding potential sources allows us to work towards at least one kind of solution. Many others are needed. Start with what CAN be done. End ge***al mutilation.

The author opens up—with pathos, humor, and props—about his experience receiving a botched circumcision.