Children’s of Alabama neonatologist Samuel Gentle, M.D.
Children’s of Alabama neonatologist Samuel Gentle, M.D., is passionate about the tiny babies he treats—and passionate in his belief that healthcare professionals like him can always do better. That’s why he helped start the Alabama Perinatal Quality Collaborative (ALPQC), a statewide initiative devoted to improving the quality of care for women and children. “Quality improvement is something I’ve been intrinsically drawn to,” he said. “I love the application of data science to a healthcare setting, allowing a confluence of providers to demonstrably show their efforts have impacted a patient population.”
The collaborative’s first project in 2018 was improving birth certificate accuracy. This might sound small, but accurate vital statistics and birth data are critical ingredients to monitor population health—particularly that of women and children—solve public health problems at the local, state and federal levels; and make wise decisions about where to spend limited dollars.
When the initiative started, just 70 percent of the 25 participating hospitals were submitting accurate birth certificates based on 11 key variables, with low reporting accuracy for individual variables such as antenatal corticosteroids, birth weight and maternal hypertension. After this quality improvement initiative, 95 percent of enrolled hospitals were submitting accurate birth certificates.
The pandemic hit before the collaborative could launch its next project. Instead of shutting down, however, “we pivoted,” Dr. Gentle said, hosting webinars about COVID-19 and maternal and child health to share best practices from other hospitals and to “continue to evolve and learn from each other.”
Finally, with the country returning to some version of normal, the ALPQC was ready to move on to one of its next projects: neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS). “Alabama saw a 20 percent increase in overdose deaths in 2020 compared to 2019,” Dr. Gentle said. “This is a critical time to address many of the aims set forth by this initiative.” In 2016, NOWS affected 6.7 per 1,000 in-hospital births with overall hospitalization costs of $572.7 million.1 In Alabama that year, nearly 600 infants covered by Medicaid were diagnosed with NOWS, an increase of nearly 100 percent from 2010.
Using the Institute of Health Improvement’s model for improving quality, the initiative focuses on developing and instituting standardized practices around NOWS, including reducing stigma, increasing the use of non-pharmacologic care, and providing structural support for mothers, including addiction services and medication for opioid use disorder.
“The global aim is to optimize care for mothers and their newborns with NOWS,” Dr. Gentle said. More specifically, the ALPQC hopes to reduce length of stay and exposure to pharmacologic treatments by 20 percent; and ensure that 95 percent of families are discharged with a collaborative plan linking them to community services. The project will run in conjunction with a third ALPQC initiative to decrease rates of severe maternal morbidity associated with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. The collaborative hopes to have results by the end of the year.
Although the ALPQC is still gathering data, at least one hospital cut the length of stay in half for infants with NOWS, Dr. Gentle said.
The success of such statewide improvement requires a broad group of stakeholders, he said. “This work would not be possible without our partnerships,” he added, which include the Alabama Hospital Association, the Alabama Department of Public Health and payers. He also highlighted ALPQC Program Director Evelyn Coronado-Guillaumet’s leadership, as well as the consortium of hospitals’ continued engagement. “The hospitals’ shared experience certainly accelerates the work,” he said.
Asked what’s next on the agenda, Dr. Gentle said telecommunication-based training for neonatal resuscitation.
1 Strahan AE, Guy GP, Bohm M, Frey M, Ko JY. Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Incidence and Health Care Costs in the United States, 2016. JAMA Pediatr. 2020;174(2):200–202.
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