Comparisons of experiences of care in labour were restricted to women with labours of spontaneous onset, as women who originally planned to deliver at the birth centre but who were induced or had an elective caesarean would have been transferred to the hospital. There were considerable differences in the continuity of midwifery care for women with labours of spontaneous onset starting care in the two settings, as Table 4 shows. In Phase 2, 42.7 per cent of women who started care at the birth centre were cared for by a midwife they had already met, compared with only 4.8 per cent at the hospital. Among women who started care at the birth centre, 87.8 per cent reported one to one care from a midwife, compared to 51.0 per cent at the hospital. Similarly, two-thirds of women who started labour care at the birth centre had the same midwife with them all the time compared with just under half of those who started care at the hospital in Phase 2. Women who said they did not have the same midwife were asked if this was because of a shift change. This was the case for just under a third of the women at the hospital who had a change of midwife and just over a half of those at the birth centre.