MIEMSS re-designates JHH as a Level IIIC Perinatal Referral Center for Maryland

The Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS), an independent state agency responsible for overseeing and coordinating all emergency medical services throughout the state, has re-designated The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) as a Level IIIC Perinatal Referral Center for Maryland. This is the 11th time JHH has earned the certification.

MIEMSS noted that JHH met or exceeded the requirements for providing excellent patient-centered care.

"This application process is very arduous and we are very proud to have received this re-designation which recognizes the highest level of care we deliver to high risk mothers and their child before birth," says Harold E. Fox, M.D., the Dr. Dorothy Edwards Professor and director of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Gynecologist and Obstetrician-in-Chief at JHH.

Re-certfication will be effective until 2017.

"Johns Hopkins Children's Center has a rich tradition in neonatology and this re-designation is yet another testament to the level of care we provide to the most vulnerable newborns," says Johns Hopkins Children's Center Director George Dover, M.D., who is chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine.

Fox added congratulations to directors and staff at JHH for achieving MIEMSS's excellent ratings.

In late 2011, as part of its re-certification process, MIEMSS sent a multidisciplinary team to Hopkins Hospital obstetrical and pediatric care sites to review policies and procedures and to evaluate the commitment, suitability and capability of perinatal care services. The review included equipment needs and performance standards, including Hopkins' capacities to accept maternal and neonatal transports from states in the mid-Atlantic region and provide outreach clinical support and education to referring institutions.

The site review team inspected facilities, interviewed members of the perinatal team and management, and examined hospital documentation, including a sample of patient records.

According to MIEMSS, to meet the rigid standards set by the agency, a hospital must provide a physician board certified in maternal-fetal medicine on staff for obstetrical services and a board-certified perinatologist for neonatal services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, a Level IIIC perinatal referral center must have systems in place to handle procedures for providing complicated and uncomplicated obstetrical care, the ability to initiate an emergency cesarean delivery, fetal monitoring capabilities which includes internal scalp electrode and central fetal monitoring in labor and delivery before and shortly after childbirth.

MIEMSS also commended Hopkins for its new maternal and children's facilities. In April, the GYN/OB and Pediatrics departments will move into a new clinical tower on the East Baltimore campus of Johns Hopkins Medicine. The number of licensed perinatal beds will increase to 35 and all rooms will be private and spacious enough to accommodate medical equipment and changing levels of care. The 45-bed neonatal intensive care unit (NICU),located in The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children's Center, will feature all private isolation rooms and will be immediately adjacent to the labor and delivery suites, providing rapid access to life-saving equipment and technologies for severely premature and critically ill newborns.

In fiscal year 2010, JHH received 180 neonatal transports, 528 in-hospital NICU admissions, and 196 maternal transports. Some 2000 babies were born in at Hopkins that time period.