Lisa Dahin Ross was the Director of Midwifery Services at the Center from 1994-1998.

 

A native of Clarksville, TN, Lisa was a nurse-practitioner and a nurse-midwife who helped establish the first freestanding birth center in Tennessee.

 

She was a huge proponent for licensure and accreditation for birth centers and worked to ensure quality services were delivered to patients. Lisa caught more than 1,000 babies in her career.

 

In 1998, she received the NACC Professional Achievement Award in recognition of her exemplary practice as a birth center midwife and her continuing contributions to the field.

 

The Lisa Ross Birth and Women's Center is a nonprofit, freestanding birth center near downtown Knoxville, TN. Our goal is to provide a unique system of women's health care to promote wellness, personal empowerment, and family involvement in the birth process and in women's health in general.

 

We embody the Birth Center concept, designed to provide access to superior quality, highly-personalized, and lower cost care.

 

History of Our Center

The Lisa Ross Birth and Women’s Center was started in 1990 as the Maternity Center of East Tennessee by a group of local citizens who recognized the need for lower cost obstetrical services. They believed the primary people to be served by the Center would be the uninsured and the under-insured.

 

The Center became a non-profit organization in 1992, with local doctors and community leaders sitting on the Board of Directors. The Center was managed by the Fort Sanders Alliance from 1992 until July of 2001. The Center averaged three certified nurse midwives on staff and caught an average of 100 babies per year.

 

In 2001, the Board decided to become independent from Fort Sanders, which had then changed to Covenant Health. On August 18, 2001, the Center celebrated 10 years in operation and renamed the Center the Lisa Ross Birth & Women’s Center in honor of Lisa Ross who was the Director of Midwifery Services at the Center from 1994-1998.

 

After renting the downstairs of our building for 17 years, in 2008 we were able to purchase the entire building with help from a Community Development Block Grant from Knox County and financing through Clayton Bank. We were able to raise funds through donations to complete renovations to the upstairs, and expand our operations to both floors thereby doubling our space.