What You Should Know:
– The American Hospital Association (AHA) and healthcare technology company Epic are collaborating to help more hospitals adopt a set of tools designed to aid in the detection and treatment of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), a serious and potentially life-threatening complication of childbirth.
– The new collaboration aims to improve health outcomes for mothers across America by integrating point-of-care tools directly into the Electronic Health Record (EHR).
Impact of Postpartum Hemorrhage
PPH is responsible for 11% of maternal deaths in the United States, and notably, 40% of all such hemorrhages occur in patients without any pre-existing risk factors. EHR-embedded tools can significantly help healthcare providers prevent, detect, and treat PPH, ultimately saving lives and improving care for mothers.
PPH EHR Toolkit
The PPH toolkit, already available to users of Epic’s Stork Obstetrics Information System, includes several critical features:
- Methods for assessing a mother’s risk of hemorrhage.
- A mechanism to continuously refresh risk assessments throughout the childbirth and postpartum period.
- Embedded guides to support clinical decision-making within clearly defined risk categories.
- Tools to facilitate the treatment of an acute hemorrhage, all within a clinician’s obstetric workflow.
With proper permissions from content providers, a similar set of tools could be implemented by users of any EHR.
“Every mother deserves a safe childbirth experience,” said Jackie Gerhart, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Epic. “That’s why we’re working together to deliver proven, point-of-care tools that help clinicians prevent and manage postpartum hemorrhage. The goal of our joint effort is to help caregivers act quickly when every second counts.”
Real-World Success Stories
The collaboration will bring together experts from Epic’s customer community and the AHA Patient Safety Initiative to increase awareness of this toolkit, supporting hospitals in their implementation journey with programming, resources, and a space to learn from each other.
Examples of successful outcomes with components of the toolkit include:
- Baptist Health in Arkansas: Delivering approximately 6,800 babies yearly, Baptist Health implemented the postpartum risk assessment tool developed by the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), a maternal emergency narrator, and a blood loss calculator in their EHR across three phases. Staff also participated in hemorrhage drills to master the tools for treating hemorrhaging patients.
- WakeMed Health & Hospitals (WakeMed): This nationally recognized not-for-profit health system in Raleigh, N.C., with 9,915 births during its 2024 fiscal year, has seen a consistent decrease in obstetric hemorrhage rates since 2022. They achieved this by using the AWHONN postpartum risk assessment tool, a maternal emergency narrator, and a quantitative blood loss calculator within their EHR.
