Safety Program in Perinatal Care (SPPC)-II Demonstration Project

Maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity (SMM) increased significantly and continuously in the United States (US) over the past 30 years. A considerable proportion of these adverse events are attributable to preventable harm and unintended consequences arising from clinical practice and the system of delivering perinatal care. To address these alarming trends, AHRQ has developed the Safety Program in Perinatal Care (SPPC). During its initial phase (SPPC-I), the program was comprised of three pillars: teamwork and communication, patient safety bundles, and in situ simulations. Despite several promising results, the evaluation of SPPC-I revealed considerable hospital attrition due to heavy data burden and competing safety initiatives. Also, differences in the local adaptation of the SPPC-I patient safety bundles selected by implementation sites thwarted a meaningful cross-site comparison of programmatic impact. The current, second phase of the program (SPPC-II), focuses on integrating the teamwork and communication pillar into patient safety bundles developed by key professional organizations and implemented in 20+ US states with technical assistance by the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) program and funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Of note, the model used by AIM to implement these bundles is through statewide perinatal quality collaboratives (PQC) aiming to enroll all birthing hospitals in the state in the PQC. During the Planning Phase of SPPC-II, the contractor, Johns Hopkins University (JHU), developed SPPC-II Training Toolkits for two AIM patient safety bundles: obstetric hemorrhage and severe hypertension in pregnancy. The aim of the SPPC-II Demonstration Project is to implement and evaluate an integrated AIM-SPPC II program that overlays the SPPC-II Training Toolkits and the AIM patient safety bundles and program infrastructure in two states -- Oklahoma (OK), currently implementing the severe hypertension bundle; and Texas (TX), currently implementing the hemorrhage bundle. Over the next five years, the AIM program is expected to cover about two thirds of US states. Therefore, there is need to determine the feasibility and impact of the proposed integrated AIM-SPPC II program, and inform future government funding decisions regarding these two programs. To this end, the SPPC-II Demonstration Project has the following goals: 1) To implement the integrated AIM-SPPC II program in birthing hospitals in OK and TX in coordination with AIM and the respective state PQC; 2) To assess the implementation of the integrated AIM-SPPC II program in these hospitals; and 3) To ascertain the short- and medium-term impact of the integrated AIM-SPPC II program on hospital (i.e. perinatal unit) teamwork and communication, patient safety, and key maternal health outcomes.

The latest form for Safety Program in Perinatal Care (SPPC)-II Demonstration Project expires 2023-12-31 and can be found here.

Training of AIM Team Leads

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Health - Health Care Services

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