OB COAP is a collaborative quality improvement program helping obstetrical care providers deliver optimum care to the childbearing people and the babies they take care of.
Following a long-standing successful model of clinician-led, data-driven quality improvement established under the Foundation for Health Care Quality, OB COAP utilizes clinical data from the medical record to evaluate the care given to pregnant persons during labor, delivery and the postpartum period as the basis for exploring actionable and sustainable improvements.
OB COAP is open to any site delivering babies. Current participants include hospitals of all sizes and neonatal/maternal level of care in urban, suburban and rural locations, as well as community births planned in home or birth centers. The data collected allows for analysis of provider-specific decisions during labor, delivery and postpartum; the impact of factors such as patient risk, gynecological history, clinician type and environment on outcomes; and balancing measures that evaluate both the intended and unintended effects of changes in practice.
The Foundation for Health Care Quality is a non-profit organization and participation in OB COAP is protected as a Certified Quality Improvement Program, making this a safe and neutral place for members to work on ensuring they maintain the highest quality of care for everyone they care for.
The Foundation for Health Care Quality and OB COAP stand against all forms of Anti-Black Racism. We are committed to address health inequities by taking active, anti-racist actions within our organization and in the services we provide. Immediate actions being taken by OB COAP include:
We stand with you as we move forward in changing the course of our society, and we welcome your input on additional actions you think we should be taking.
As our members continue to work to control the COVID-19 outbreak and respond to the increasing needs on our healthcare system, we are providing some links to various resources and will update this site as new information becomes available.
OB COAP participants and researchers are continually examining data and working on QI efforts
The OB COAP database currently has information on over 200,000 births and is growing every day. Many opportunities exist to be involved in research or in collaborating with us to advance obstetrical improvement efforts. Visit our research and collaborations page to find out more!
Several OB COAP participating sites will be participating in the Nurse Impact Washington project, a collaboration between Ariadne Labs at Harvard, the Boston College School of Nursing, and the Foundaiton for Health Care Quality. This project will explore nursing-led innovation in the creation of measurement capacity and the promotion of best practices to enable transformative progress in both the safety and dignity of care for millions of childbearing people and their families. The partners within this project intend to deploy and assess the potential of this approach at select member hospitals in Washington State affiliated with OB COAP). See more about the grant supporting this work: Hillman Innovations in Care Grant