Capital Health Joins the HHS Perinatal Improvement Collaborative to Improve Outcomes for Mothers and Babies

Monday, November 15, 2021

Capital Health Medical Center - Hopewell, home of Capital Health's Maternity Services Program and Josephine Plumeri Birthing Center, is participating in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Perinatal Improvement Collaborative, a large-scale, data-driven collaborative of 200+ leading hospitals caring for diverse populations in all 50 states. The collaborative is overseen by the HHS Office on Women's Health (OWH), using real-time data, analytics and performance improvement methodologies from Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC).

"Through this collaboration with HHS and Premier, we'll help make certain that all women and their babies have access to best doctors and receive care that is safe, timely and equitable," said Al Maghazehe, president and CEO of Capital Health. "Using data-driven, evidence-based practices, we'll improve the health of our community and help make advancements on a national level to ensure that mothers and babies across the country have the best possible outcomes."

The HHS Perinatal Improvement Collaborative will test interventions and protocols to reduce preventable deaths and complications among mothers and their babies. Using Premier's comprehensive and timely PINC AI™ Healthcare Database (PHD), a standardized data collection system, the program will be able to quickly generate solutions for safer obstetric and neonatal care that can be implemented nationwide.

At its core, the initiative is a health equity effort that strives to address troubling disparities in birth outcomes and examine how care might be reliably tailored to mothers with different needs. Reliable and timely data will help paint a complete picture of the circumstances surrounding clinical care of mothers and babies to improve measurement and comparisons across geographies and populations. The collaborative will also investigate the outcomes of mothers and babies individually and jointly to understand how outcomes between the two are directly linked. This will help to improve data quality and enhance evaluation and research of pregnancy on overall population health. By identifying social determinants of health, the initiative will develop strategies to reduce persistent racial, ethnic and geographic disparities in care to help reduce risks for mothers and babies who most susceptible to poor health outcomes.

"Maternal health is an important indicator for infant health," said Dr. Dorothy Fink, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women's Health and Director, Office on Women's Health. "If we can standardize quality care for women during pregnancy and after giving birth, we can change the current trajectory of maternal and infant death. When mothers have better health, we create better opportunities for infants and the larger community to have better health. I'm excited this collaboration will help us fulfill the HHS Maternal Health Action Plan and vision that our nation is the safest for women to give birth. At HHS, we are committed to making this happen."

"Premier is passionate about using data that informs clinical best practices to help improve care for mothers and babies," said Michael J. Alkire, president and CEO of Premier. "We are honored to partner with Capital Health to continue providing the gold standard for health care data, unmatched measurement and analytics capabilities, and proven track record of working together to help make America the safest place in the world to give birth."

The effort will be guided by an external advisory panel comprising more than 20 expert clinicians and thought leaders, and patient partners from MoMMA's Voices, a coalition of advocacy organizations focused on leading causes of maternal mortality and morbidity.

The Maternity Services Program at Capital Health Medical Center - Hopewell makes up the most complete maternity facility in the area. From routine deliveries to high-risk needs, staff at the Josephine Plumeri Birthing Center at Capital Health Medical Center - Hopewell provide a full range of prenatal, obstetrical, postpartum, and neonatal care options to make sure new families have the greatest chance for healthy beginnings. The designated Regional Perinatal Center provides neonatal care, including Mercer County's only Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for at-risk births, as well as in-house coverage by obstetricians, midwives, neonatologists, perinatologists, and anesthesiologists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As New Jersey's first site to house the March of Dimes Family Support program, the program also provides information and emotional support to families of critically ill newborns being cared for in the NICU. Also, Capital Health's comprehensive Childbirth and Parent Education Program can help prepare parents for the journey ahead-from what to expect at birth through caring for an infant. To learn more, visit capitalhealth.org/maternity.

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