PA PQC Annual Meeting Discusses Progress and Next Steps

The Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative held its annual meeting May 4 at the Hilton in Harrisburg. With approximately 140 attendees, it was the first in-person annual meeting since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The theme of the annual meeting was "continuum of care" and emphasized the work of healthcare teams who have committed to quality improvement initiatives within their hospitals, encouraging them to visualize how to expand quality improvement work beyond the hospital to collaborations with community organizations and agencies.

Presentations included: A PA PQC data update by Aasta Mehta, MD, MPP, and James A. Cook, MD, PA PQC Advisory Group co-chairs; maternal and child health policy priorities and feedback from PA PQC healthcare teams and stakeholders by Akbar Hossain, Secretary of Policy and Planning, PA Office of the Governor; and "Eating an Elephant: Application of Quality Improvement Tools to Pursue Big Aims Through Small Steps of Change by Jane Colwell, MSN, RN, Senior Director Women's Quality and Patient Safety, Carilion Clinic Lead.

David B. Nelson, MD, FACOG, gave the keynote address "Extending Maternal Care after Pregnancy (eMCAP): An Initiative to Address Health Care Disparities and Enhance Access to Care After Delivery. Dr. Nelson holds the Gillette Professorship of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is the Dedman Family Scholar in Clinical Car Chief, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and an Associate Professor, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. His presentation materials are available here.

Regional breakout sessions were also held, providing an opportunity for providers to network, share, and discuss outcomes.

A new addition to this year's annual meeting was poster presentations from PA PQC Healthcare Teams who shared their work on substance use disorder, substance-exposed newborns, Immediate Postpartum Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (IPLARC), maternal depression, and sever hypertension initiatives.

To keep the momentum of its annual meeting, the PA PQC will host monthly virtual regional meetings with healthcare teams, agencies and organizations in each of its five regions, continuing with the theme of "Continuum of Care."