UnitedHealthcare & Tennessee Initiative for Perinatal Quality Care Partner to Improve Health of Pregnant Women with Opioid Us...
March 07 2019 - 9:30AM
Business Wire
- Multiyear initiative will help advance
best practices for hospitals treating newborns exposed to opioids
and their mothers with opioid use disorder
UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Tennessee announced its
support of a multiyear project led by the Tennessee Initiative for
Perinatal Quality Care (TIPQC) to improve the care of
Opioid-Exposed Newborns (OEN) and their mothers with opioid use
disorder.
The announcement was made at TIPQC’s annual meeting in Franklin,
where a panel of experts behind the initiative spoke about its
expected outcomes and impact on the people of Tennessee.
“The impact of the opioid crisis is intensifying every day,
requiring the health care system to respond with compassionate care
and data-driven solutions,” said Dr. Joel Bradley, chief
medical officer of UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Tennessee.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to support this project, and
for our strong partnership with TIPQC and OptumLabs to collect and
share important best practices with care providers.”
The project builds on work previously done by TIPQC to create a
standardized and simple-to-implement toolkit for care providers to
treat opioid-exposed newborns and their mothers with opioid use
disorder. The initiative will bring together teams of care
providers from participating delivery hospitals across Tennessee,
along with OptumLabs, a collaborative research and innovation
center, to support TIPQC in collecting and analyzing data so that
findings can be reviewed, discussed and put into practice by care
providers participating in the program.
The primary focus of the initiative is to offer a supportive
environment for obstetric and newborn care providers to share best
practices for treating their patients with opioid exposure, collect
and identify patterns of care and ultimately implement
evidence-based protocols in a variety of clinical settings. In
addition, as most opioid-exposed newborns are born at hospitals
without a NICU, the partnership aims to provide clear, simple
guidelines so birth centers or hospitals without NICUs can provide
care instead of transferring newborns to another facility. Doing so
leverages family and community support systems in addition to the
local health care system to optimize outcomes for opioid-exposed
newborns.
NICU sites participating in the program will review hospital
practices including:
- prenatal consults;
- breastfeeding guidelines and rooming
baby and mother together;
- screening, scoring and diagnosis of
Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS);
- education of parents and staff;
- discharge planning;
- treatment protocols; and
- working with child welfare.
The State of Tennessee experienced a 70.5 percent increase in
drug deaths – from 12.9 to 22 per 100,000 people since 2007,
according to the United Health Foundation's America's Health
Rankings. Last year alone, the Tennessee Department of Health
reported 881 cases of NAS in the state, and an unknown number of
opioid-exposed newborns who were at risk for NAS. Maternal
addiction can lead to Low Birth Weight newborns through either
premature labor or through Intrauterine Growth Restriction. Opioid
exposure in the womb can have far more serious health effects for
babies due to NAS, which can cause a high rate of neurological
injury, and death due to the impact of opioid withdrawal.
“As health care providers, we’re all looking for ways to improve
the care of those we serve,” said Dr. Mike Devoe, state project
leader for the initiative and Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital
at Vanderbilt neonatologist. “Thanks to support from
UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Tennessee, we’ll be able to
advance the integrated care we provide to newborns and their
mothers.”
“UnitedHealthcare is collaborating with health care providers in
our communities, using data and analytics to promote coordinated
efforts and take action based on best practices. Together, we can
help make the system work better for everyone, so that quality care
can be based on the strongest factors for success,” said Keith
Payet, president and CEO of UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of
Tennessee.
UnitedHealthcare serves 1.2 million people in Tennessee with a
network of more than 31,000 physicians and other care providers and
nearly 140 hospitals statewide.
About TIPQCSince its inception in 2007, the Tennessee
Initiative for Perinatal Quality Care (TIPQC) promotes
collaborative statewide inter-institutional projects designed to
improve perinatal outcomes for mothers and babies in Tennessee.
TIPQC is funded by a grant awarded from the State of Tennessee
through TennCare, with federal additional matching funds through
the Department of Health (TDH). The mission of TIPQC is to
improve health outcomes for mothers and newborns in Tennessee by
engaging key stakeholders in a perinatal quality collaborative that
will identify opportunities to optimize birth outcomes and
implement data-driven provider- and community-based performance
improvement initiatives.
About OptumLabsOptumLabs is a collaborative research and
innovation center, dedicated to improving patient care and patient
value through data-driven health care research, leading-edge data
science and strong partner collaboration. OptumLabs was
founded through a partnership between Optum, a leading health
services and innovation company, and Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit
worldwide leader in medical care, research and
innovation. AARP, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with
membership of more than 37 million individuals, is its Founding
Consumer Advocate Organization. Today OptumLabs has more than 25
collaborating organizations, representing stakeholders from across
the health system.
About UnitedHealthcareUnitedHealthcare is dedicated to
helping people live healthier lives and making the health system
work better for everyone by simplifying the health care experience,
meeting consumer health and wellness needs, and sustaining trusted
relationships with care providers. In the United States,
UnitedHealthcare offers the full spectrum of health benefit
programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid
beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 1.2 million
physicians and care professionals, and 6,500 hospitals and other
care facilities nationwide. The company also provides health
benefits and delivers care to people through owned and operated
health care facilities in South America. UnitedHealthcare is one of
the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified
health care company. For more information, visit UnitedHealthcare
at www.uhc.com/ or follow @UHC on Twitter.
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Ellen
O’BrienUnitedHealthcare612-597-0734Ellen.Obrien@uhc.com
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