PeriGen CEO recently shared “Newborns don’t defer birth” on LinkedIn. As other medical procedures may be delayed during COVID-19, babies just keep coming! Click here to see the original post and share your comments.
A Clear Case to Better Equip L&D Clinicians
COVID-19 signals a sea change moment for healthcare organizations to adopt technologies improving safety, efficiency and cost-effective practice. Look no further than any labor and delivery (L&D) floor for resounding proof! By March of 2020, while most medical procedures were being reassessed, deferred or cancelled, babies just kept coming!
According to a recent and widely referenced study published by Strata Decision Technology*, while the level of virtually all inpatient procedures and surgeries declined steeply, perinatal volumes were consistent or even rose! L&D managers had to quickly adapt to new complexities such as: maintaining and monitoring “clean and quarantine” wards, protecting and re-tasking frontline caregivers with high risk profiles, and administering and monitoring powerful drugs such as oxytocin with a staff stretched thin. In a PeriGen poll of more than 200 L&D nurses, 77% of respondents reported significant staffing impacts to their Women & Children’s inpatient services – furloughs, layoffs, cutbacks, and reallocation.** Same patient volume. More complexity. Less staff.
Many PeriGen customers counted on the PeriWatch Vigilance® early warning system and the PeriGen HUB remote monitoring module to help bedside clinicians manage patients and ensure safe care. One health system in Ohio rolled out PeriGen’s HUB in one week’s time so it could monitor labors across multiple hospitals from one centralized “safety net” observation station. Of course, all the facilities were under quarantine, so PeriGen provided technical and clinical support and training virtually through Zoom – not ideal but it worked!
L&D must always carry on without missing a beat, but the service line routinely bears the brunt of medical malpractice claims, a shrinking number of experienced practitioners, and criticism over subjective practices. Adopting technologies to augment clinical care in L&D is critical to safety and sustainability, and that has never been clearer than right now.
* Strata Decision Technology National Patient and Procedure Volume Tracker
** PeriGen Webinar: Maternal Patient Safety: COVID-19 & Beyond; May 19, 2020
