Our Work with Hospitals

Hospitals play a key role in the health and health care of our community. Engaging hospitals' leadership teams, particularly those responsible for care quality and safety, is important to MHI.

With this in mind, MHI recently launched a Hospital Innovators Council to gain the experience and insight of the region's most innovative hospital leadership. Each day, our region's hospitals care for our community's sickest patients and do so in an incredibly complex environment. MHI's Board seeks to better understand this work and how its data and collaborative process can support hospitals' ongoing efforts to improve quality, safety and efficiency. This committee is chaired by Dr. Jay Moore of SSM Health Care - St. Louis.

REDUCING EARLY ELECTIVE DELIVERIES

The committee's first project is to better understand why early elective deliveries occur in our region and determine strategies to reduce them. Babies induced in early term, between 37 and 39 weeks, have a higher risk for breathing and other problems that require longer hospital stays, often in neonatal intensive care units. In 3rd and 4th grade, children who were born just a few days early are more likely to have lower reading and spelling scores. Mothers induced during this time have a significantly higher risk of cesarean section than those who go into labor naturally. 

For 30 years, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has recommended against physicians performing inductions or cesarean sections prior to 39 weeks. However, hospital policies, patient requests, physician preferences and payment models have not always supported consistent adherence to these recommendations.  While local figures are not yet available, it is estimated that more than 20 percent of babies nationally are born electively before 39 weeks. Communities across the country including St. Louis are working to reverse these trends.

To learn more about these efforts nationally and see how often some St. Louis hospitals are performing these deliveries visit http://www.leapfroggroup.org/tooearlydeliveries. 

To learn more about MHI's efforts to reduce early elective deliveries, contact mjcondon@stlbhc.org.