In Delivery Rooms, Reducing Births of Convenience

Public private partnerships are helping hospitals in Nigeria provide more efficient care, especially as it relates to maternal health. In Lagos State, the model – which partners a private healthcare management firm with the hospital – has helped better equip facilities so more laboratory tests can be conducted in one place. Although this solution doesn't necessarily solve all problems faced by those seeking care, it has helped to provide a more sustainable model of healthcare in many cases.

In Nigeria where maternal deaths are not uncommon, a hospital in Zaria has implemented the Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) System to analyze and better understand the causes associated with this problem. Already, the country is seeing results as less new mothers are dying due to medical facilities being able to assess what went wrong in a more efficient and proactive manner.

Peru formerly had one of the highest rates of stunting in South America, with chronic malnutrition affecting more than 1 in 4 children under five. Thanks to results-based budgeting and a government-wide commitment to fighting child poverty, the country has halved that rate, improving the long-term health and cognitive development of its youngest citizens.

The Million Death study revealed that the child mortality rate in India has decreased over the past 15 years. These results are most likely due to vaccine drives, free diagnostics, more health clinics and other such improvements.

The United States health care system is expensive and enables doctors to prescribe costly brand name medication instead of generic versions. Sutter Health assembles its doctors a few times a week to review with electronic records the prescribing of brand name drugs and the necessity of procedures as an effort to reduce health care costs and to reduce unnecessary tests. In two years, the initiative has saved $30 million.

More than five million Americans have Alzheimer’s or similar illnesses, and that number is growing as the population ages - without any immediate prospect of a cure, advocacy groups have begun promoting ways to offer people with dementia a comfortable decline instead of imposing on them a medical model of care, which seeks to defer death through escalating interventions. An Arizona nursing home offers new ways to care for people with dementia.

A shortage of incubators in a Bogota hospital was causing rampant infections among newborns. Kangaroo care, a system where the infant's mother is employed as a human incubator, was created and solved the shortage problem.

Dr. Brent James, chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, came up with a system for regulating and improving healthcare in the Intermountain medical region and at other hospitals nationwide. He teaches a program called the Advanced Training Program that draws physicians and hospital administrators from all over the country. His method is simple; his team develops best care standards for an array of common medical ailments by regulating the care that is suggested to doctors, monitoring patient outcomes based on these practices, and refining the literature to be even more accurate.

To address maternal mortality, drapes with volume markings are being used to manage life-threatening bleeding after birth. The drapes collect the blood and are marked with measurements so healthcare workers can monitor blood loss and interfere and provide care before it’s too late. The drapes were tested in 78 hospitals throughout the country between August 2021 and the end of 2022 and allowed healthcare workers to interfere with excessive bleeding in time for 90% of patients.

Nurse-midwifery programs, like the one at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, are working to build a workforce of nurse-midwives in Southern maternal care deserts. Greater demand for midwifery care yields an opportunity for universities to step in and fill that void in the labor force by creating nurse-midwife graduate programs.