MetroHealth Named Among America’s Best Maternity Hospitals

Once again, The MetroHealth System's commitment to outstanding maternal and infant health has earned it a place among the nation's top maternity hospitals. Newsweekhas named MetroHealth to its prestigious hospitals listing for 2024, a designation presented with Statistica Inc., the world-leading statistics portal and industry ranking provider.

"We are proud of our place on Newsweek's list of American's Best Maternity Hospitals," said Kimberly Green, RN, Vice President, Women & Children Services. "It represents our team's hard work and dedication to ensuring our patients receive the individualized, compassionate care they need and deserve."

The honor further reinforces MetroHealth's reputation as a leader in pregnancy care, providing the highest-quality care for its community's expectant women and newborns. This commitment goes back more than 90 years with the delivery of more than 160,000 babies since the opening of the now-retired labor and delivery suites in 1974.

In 2023, MetroHealth opened its state-of-the-art Birthing Centerand NICU. In its first year, the Center saw impressive outcomes: Only 18% of the first-time deliveries were by cesarean section, less than the national average of 22.5 percent; the pre-term birthrate was lowered to 14%, down from 16% the year before the Center opened.

MetroHealth is known for its expertise with both low and high-risk pregnancies. But the System is going beyond its own walls in its commitment to maternal health, raising the alarm about the health inequities that make Black women three times more likely than white women to die in childbirth.

"Our goal as a health system is nothing less than eliminating those health inequities and eradicating the maternal health crisis," said MetroHealth CEO & President Airica Steed, Ed.D, RN, MBA, FACHE. "Through our clinical work and our research as well as collaborations with others in the healthcare industry, we intend to become a national model for making high-quality healthcare accessible to all, so everyone has the same chance at a healthy pregnancy and delivery."

MetroHealth is a leader at the state and national levels in the effort to eliminate maternal health disparities. The System's Obstetric team plays an instrumental role in the Ohio Perinatal Quality Collaborative, a partnership between the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Hospital Association.

The Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine is one of only a few in the United States selected to participate in the prestigious Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute in Child Health and Human Development's Maternal Fetal Medicine Units (MFMU) Research Network.

"MetroHealth's commitment to ending the maternal health crisis plays out every day in the outstanding care we provide to our own patients experiencing low- and high-risk pregnancies," said Donald "Chip" Wiper III, MD, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "But it extends outside of our community through the groundbreaking research our team is doing to improve pregnancy care not only for our own patients but also for women throughout the nation and the world."

To ensure the quality and validity of the ranking, Newsweek and Statista used a complex method of evaluation drawn from three data sources.

• Nationwide Online Survey: Health care professionals and hospital managers with knowledge about maternity processes. For example, neonatal and perinatal doctors, nurses and midwives were asked to recommend leading maternity hospitals in the U.S.
• Results from Patient Surveys: Publicly available data from hospital patient surveys were used to analyze patient experience.
• Hospital Quality Metric: Metrics relevant to maternity care from a variety of public sources were collected with a focus on indicators relevant to maternity care.

View the full awards list here.

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