Ascension Health launches project to determine best methods to reduce or eliminate birth complications

Ascension Health, the nation's largest Catholic and nonprofit healthcare system, is launching a demonstration project to determine best methods to reduce or eliminate birth complications. The project, Excellence in Obstetrics, will take place within the obstetrical care units at five Ascension Health Ministries.  The project is made possible through a $2.9 million grant that Ascension Health received from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) under its Patient Safety and Medical Liability initiative.

The Excellence in Obstetrics project is designed to determine whether and how birth complications can be reduced or eliminated altogether.  It will also evaluate medical liability models that put patient safety first and foster better communication between doctors and their patients.

The project will focus initially on improving patient safety and outcomes related to obstetrical deliveries, with the long-term goal of spreading concepts and key learnings to other high-risk areas, including emergency departments and operating rooms.

The five Ascension Health Ministries that will participate in the study are: Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast (Miramar Beach, Fla.), St. Vincent's Birmingham (Birmingham, Ala.), St. John Hospital and Medical Center (Detroit, Mich.), Columbia St. Mary's (Milwaukee, Wis.), and Saint Agnes Hospital (Baltimore, Md.).

"We believe the Excellence in Obstetrics demonstration project will help save the lives of mothers and their babies by improving safety in the birthing process," says Ann Hendrich, RN, PhD (c), F.A.A.N., vice president of clinical excellence operations for Ascension Health.

Throughout its 11-year history, Ascension Health has committed itself to making organizational and cultural changes in order to reduce preventable patient injuries and deaths. The Excellence in Obstetrics project is intended to further improve the organization's understanding of the relationship between quality and risk management objectives.

The AHRQ program seeks to foster better doctor-patient communication, ensure patients are fairly and quickly compensated in a fair and timely manner for medical injuries, thus reducing the incidence of lawsuits and liability premiums. The goals of the demonstration projects throughout the country are to offer practical and effective alternatives to the current medical liability problem, and to provide a model for broader scale implementation.

"The 'business case' for patient safety has not been adequately established in healthcare," said Hendrich, " We anticipate that the Excellence in Obstetrics project will offer successful models of practice, and we intend to translate the anticipated success of this program to other hospitals and clinical practice areas across Ascension Health and, ultimately, to other healthcare facilities across the U.S."