The Family Place, Evangelical Community Hospital’s obstetrics unit, has earned recognition in the areas of quality improvement for maternal substance use and opioid use disorder care. The Family Place received two Quality Improvement Awards from the Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative (PA PQC), which is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs and administered by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. To earn these awards, The Family Place successfully completed milestones demonstrating how The Family Place is implementing best practices and using data to improve care for pregnant and postpartum women with substance use.
The Family Place has been an active participant with the PA PQC since its inception in 2019. In 2021, The Family Place received their first Quality Improvement Award and has continued to meet the necessary milestones to earn additional awards in the following quarters. The most recent awards were earned by meeting milestones for the period of April 1 through June 30, 2022. Evangelical is one of 55 birth hospitals/NICUs across the Commonwealth striving to complete these milestones and earn this PA PQC recognition.
As a result, The Family Place has been awarded $15,000 to date in 2022 to further support efforts to build the care team’s infrastructure for improving the identification of and care for pregnant and postpartum individuals with substance use and neonatal abstinence syndrome.
“It is a priority of The Family Place staff to give all babies the strongest start possible in life,” said Jennifer Sullivan, RN, BSN, Manager of The Family Place. “The commitment our staff has dedicated to be fully educated on how to best work with mothers and their newborns where substance use issues are present shows the compassion and understanding they have for our patients. As the needs of our patients change, they continue to learn more to be fully equipped for complete care.”
For more information on The Family Place and its offerings for all moms and babies, visit www.EvanHospital.com/TheFamilyPlace.
About Evangelical Community Hospital
Evangelical Community Hospital is a non-profit organization that employs 1,900 individuals and has more than 170 employed and non-employed physicians on staff. The facility is licensed to accommodate 131 overnight patients in private rooms designed for healing, patient safety, and positive patient experience.
The Hospital provides a comprehensive array of services in both inpatient and outpatient settings and serves residents throughout the Central Susquehanna Valley, including those living in Snyder, Union, Northumberland, and Lycoming counties.
More information can be found at www.evanhospital.com.
About the Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative
As an action arm of the PA Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC), the Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative (PA PQC) supports perinatal care teams in adopting key interventions to achieve collective aims. 55 birth hospitals and NICUs, representing 81% of live births in PA, are participating in the PA PQC to improve care for maternal substance use, substance-exposed newborns, maternal depression, and severe hypertension. The PA PQC is administered by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.
More information can be found at https://www.whamglobal.org/papqc.
Evangelical Community Hospital’s The Family Place Earns Maternal Health Quality Improvement Award
