PA Perinatal Quality Collaborative Presents 2021 Goals
On February 25, the Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative (PA PQC) met to discuss priorities for 2021. The collaborative, launched in 2019, aims to reduce maternal mortality and improve care for pregnant and postpartum women and newborns affected by opioids.
The PA PQC is growing its work within its two main focus areas: maternal Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS).
The PA PQC's newest initiatives focus on maternal depression, severe hypertension, and the reduction of associated racial/ethnic disparities. In 2020, the PA PQC began working to improve statewide maternal depression screening and follow-up rates, as part of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services' participation in the CLASP Moving on Maternal Depression initiative (MOMD), with a focus on racial equity and disparities. In February 2021, the PA PQC completed recruiting birth hospitals and their prenatal/postpartum and pediatric offices to join the MOMD initiative. Sites will now adopt key interventions to achieve MOMD's goals using guidance and resources from the MOMD Change Package. Through this initiative, hospital teams will partner with community organizations and patient advocates to better understand gaps in maternal depression and high rates of health disparities. Together, hospital teams and community partners will develop a collective action plan to further address maternal depression and promote maternal health.
As an action arm of the PA Maternal Mortality Review Committee, the PA PQC is coordinating the rollout of the PA Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) initiative, which launched in September 2020 with the support of the PA Department of Health. By the end of March 2021, the PA PQC aims to recruit 15 PA PQC birth hospitals to participate in the PA AIM initiative and implement the PA AIM Planning Task Force's PA AIM Bundle, to reduce racial disparities for severe hypertension in pregnancy.
The PA PQC is expanding its efforts to support birth hospitals in providing immediate postpartum long-acting reversible contraception (IPLARC). The PA PQC is now recruiting a third cohort of hospital teams to participate in the Immediate Postpartum LARC initiative and aims to initiate work with these teams in April 2021.