Our Obstetrical Care Outcomes Assessment Program (OB COAP) has received a 1.3-million-dollar grant from Ballmer Group to create an unprecedented maternal data registry integrating clinical data from the electronic health record with patient survey information. We know that a birthing person’s experience, opinions and feelings of safety can be as important as clinical outcomes and now this project provides a data-driven foundation to shed new light on tackling our maternal health care crisis and improve person-centered, equitable, and respectful intrapartum and postpartum care.

“Maternal Care has failed to get better because we focus on data and metrics that are easy to get.”
– Angela Chien, MD – Medical Director, OB COAP

This three-year project funded by Ballmer Group will involve hospitals in Washington State participating in OB COAP and TeamBirth.  OB COAP uses a proven framework of clinical data-driven, clinician-led collaboration to improve the care given during labor, delivery, and the postpartum period. Provider-specific, real-time, chart-abstracted data are the basis for analysis and benchmarking. Site and region-level improvements stem from the ability to understand precise, targeted opportunities for actionable and sustainable changes and greater provider accountability.

TeamBirth, developed by Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, is an industry-standard process to improve communication, teamwork, and shared-decision making throughout the birthing process. Patient survey data is an integral part of TeamBirth. What has been missing is the ability to directly intertwine this information with clinical outcomes at the patient level. As Ariadne Labs and the Washington State Hospital Association roll out TeamBirth across the state, OB COAP will work alongside them to capture this survey data using technology developed by Twistle by Health Catalyst and link it with OB COAP’s clinical data.

Through this innovative project, we seek to create a new model for measuring quality and the impact of changes and interventions that will transform childbirth across the country – allowing over-burdened and under-resourced healthcare providers and systems to focus efforts at making changes in a meaningful and measurable way.