NACPM is a founding member organization of the Coalition for Quality Maternal Care (CQMC), a partnership of national professional, consumer, and human rights organizations that have come together to champion the urgent need for national strategies to ensure access to affordable, high quality maternity care for all women and infants.
On January 6, NACPM signed a letter sent by the ACNM on behalf of CQMC members to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) providing specific recommendations regarding issues related to maternity care. MACPAC is a non-partisan, federal agency charged with providing policy and data analysis to the Congress on Medicaid and CHIP, and for making recommendations to the Congress and the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the states on a wide range of issues affecting those programs. The goal of the CQMC was to foster continued focus on maternity care by MACPAC as much of its previous work has centered on other aspects of coverage under Medicaid.
MACPAC responded to the CQMC letter, indicating that the recommendations had been circulated to commissioners and appropriate staff. The Commission has included a chapter providing general information on Medicaid’s maternity care in one of its previous reports and plans to include recommendations regarding maternity care in a forthcoming report, focused on the complexities around Medicaid coverage for pregnant women.
New This Year:
Quality Rating System
to Inform Pregnant Women
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is implementing a requirement of the Affordable Care Act to develop a Quality Rating System (QRS) to assist consumers as they make decisions regarding their health plans. As part of this process, CMS is soliciting comments on a list of proposed quality measures that Qualified Health Plan issuers would be required to collect and report on.
NACPM has joined the CQMC in a submitting a letter expressing appreciation to CMS for identifying maternity care as an area which merits distinct measurement. To date, CMS has proposed including only one measure, out of a total of 42, that rates two factors related to maternity care. Given the place of maternity care within the health system in terms of both number of procedures and cost, CQMC believes that two measures are insufficient, stating, “We believe that this group of women and their partners will be very interested in information regarding the quality of maternity care provided through the plans available to them.”
The coalition recommends three priority measures (exclusive breastfeeding; cesarean section rate for low-risk women; timeliness of prenatal & postnatal care) and four additional measures for consideration in the development of the Quality Rating System.
In addition the coalition recommends to CMS, “because women may choose to obtain care from a variety of provider types (e.g., OB/GYNs, Family Practice physicians, Certified Nurse Midwives/Certified Midwives, Certified Professional Midwives), and in different settings (e.g., hospitals, birth centers and residences) it would be helpful if…plans report this data broken down by provider type and place of service. Consumers would thus have access to more specific and useful information to guide them in their enrollment choices.“
Join Virtual Community for Quality Improvement Skills
NACPM has recently learned that Diana Jolles, CNM, MS, the ACNM Quality Section Chair has a plan to deliver quality improvement skills to the midwife community in the United States through the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Jolles, a professor at Frontier Nursing University in Kentucky, is creating a virtual community for students, faculty, and practicing midwives. All midwives, Jolles says, are welcome to join the group, which will learn from the IHI Open School courses throughout 2014.
Jolles sees big challenges – and big opportunities – in the field of quality and safety in the midwife community. This virtual community will include monthly webinars to complement learning from the Open School courses. The first webinar “Increasing Midwifery-led Quality Improvement Capability” has already taken place. Webinars still to be offered include:
“Quality Improvement and Perinatal Safety,” on February 6
“Midwifery Leadership and Quality Improvement,” on March 6
“Person- and Family-Centered Care Midwifery-led Quality Improvement Programs,” on April 7
Email Diana to learn more about the midwife community she is launching.
Please join NACPM in our ongoing work to advocate for quality improvements in national maternity care.
Join or renew your membership, if you haven’t already; invite others to join; and like us on Facebook today to help spread the word.
Sincerely,
Mary Lawlor, Executive Director
Ellie Daniels, President