It Takes a Village: Implementing a Multidisciplinary Perinatal Collaborative

Purpose for the program: Healthcare organizations face multiple challenges in meeting regulatory compliance, disseminating best practice, and securing highly skilled nurses under economic constraints.  The aim of the Regional Perinatal Collaborative (RPC) among five hospitals within a larger hospital organization is to facilitate the five hospitals in securing education, resources, and technologies that will achieve the greatest advances towards improving the health of pregnant women and their newborns while promoting efficient use of services and resources.

Proposed change: The RPC design was undertaken in January, 2009 based on the following principles: (1) uniform processes and procedures result in improved quality outcomes; (2) a reduction in adverse outcomes is a direct result of standardization based on evidence-based practice; (3) teams that work collaboratively obtain greater resources, recognition, and reward when facing competition for finite resources within a larger healthcare system; (4) a broad network of experts available for consultation builds strong leadership teams able to implement action plans efficiently.

Implementation, outcomes and evaluation: The collaborative was formed by bringing a multidisciplinary team together comprised of nursing and medical leaders in labor/delivery, mother/baby, newborn intensive care and pediatrics; directors in human resources, quality improvement, and information systems. An appointed chair and co-chair bring a structured approach to the quarterly meetings with standing agenda items including quality, safety, compliance, information systems, and human resources.  By developing clear action plans with well defined goals, timeline and expected outcomes, the collaborative achieved many successes. Development and implementation of a regionalized electronic medical record for labor/delivery was completed in a one year period with approval and funding to expand the specialty software into mother/baby, nursery, newborn intensive care, and antepartum units at all five hospitals. This was one of the most outstanding successes. Additional accomplishments include strengthened relationships between regional perinatal group, information system, quality improvement, and acquisition development; and integration of a newborn intensive care and obstetric dashboard to compare outcomes and extract best practice for sharing. The RPC is the perfect platform to evaluate the new perinatal core measures from The Joint Commission.

Implications for nursing practice:  

Additional nursing implications include heightened ability to manage risk through standardization of best practices and collaboration. Among these best practices is standardization of perinatal documentation across the region. The collaborative provided a format to expand upon and standardize emergency drills to enhance an environment of safety. Future projects include regional standardization of policies and procedures. Regionalization can be accomplished leading to best practice, enhanced safety and collegial relationships for positive outcomes.

 

Keywords:

 

 Collaboration

Perinatal

Regionalization