Empowered Patient Podcast Role of Technology in Addressing Maternal Mortality and Improving Health Education with Lora Sparkman Relias
Lora Sparkman, an RN and VP and Partner of Clinical Solutions, Patient Safety, and Quality at Relias, highlights the high maternal mortality rate in the US and the factors that contribute to it. Lora emphasizes the need for standardization of definitions and a better understanding of the social determinants of health that influence the success of a pregnancy, including the need for pre-pregnancy and post-pregnancy healthcare. Digital technology is bringing advancements to healthcare education and helping overcome geographic barriers to improve outcomes and reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.
Lora explains, "In some cases, we're getting our hands around the real story versus some variation across states and definitions, and how death was categorized, those types of things. Putting that all behind us, there's been a lot more work and effort at the federal and national levels to standardize definitions and categories."
"There's been kind of a shift we've seen over the last couple of years, which is we've been very focused on the death rate, again, but that's kind of like, what's leading up to that? Why are we having so many deaths? We're starting to understand and see that we need to focus on pre-pregnancy health, general health, and access to healthcare during pregnancy. Severe maternal morbidity affects about 50,000 to 60,000 women each year. Those numbers are growing."
"No matter where pregnant people are getting their care, our aim and the work that we've been doing at Relias is focused on standardization of using care delivery and protocols and making sure that physicians, nurses, midwives, or anyone who is caring for pregnant people, are utilizing evidence-based guidelines, are aware of the latest evidence-based in research in areas like hypertension, and obstetric hemorrhage, and substance use disorder in pregnancy."
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