- Georgia: South Georgia Medical Center has selected C. Ross Berry as its new CEO. Berry will take over the position from interim CEO Heath Evans, who's held the role since March. Berry has previously served as CEO of Starus Medical Group in Florida and of Shoals Hospital in Alabama (Vaidya, Becker's Hospital Review, 5/24).
- Kansas/Missouri: Saint Luke's Health System is partnering with Washington University in St. Louis to expand its cancer clinical trial offerings. Timothy Pluard, director of Saint Luke's Cancer Institute, said the partnership "essentially for us is about tripling the number of [National Cancer Institute] clinical trials that we'll have access to." Under the partnership, Saint Luke's will work with Washington University's Siteman Cancer Center, which is one of only a small number of centers to receive NCI's Comprehensive Cancer Center designation, according to the Kansas City Business Journal (Reuter, Kansas City Business Journal, 5/24).
- Virginia: VCU Medical Center on Wednesday announced the successful delivery of sextuplets on May 11. According to VCU, the three boys and three girls are doing well about two weeks post-delivery. The delivery involved a 40-person team that had run pre-delivery drills ahead of the big day. According to CDC, for every four million live births in the United States, only 24 involved quintuplets or "higher-order births," WSET reports. The couple had been trying to conceive for 17 years (Associated Press/WSET, 5/24).
9 elements of top perinatal patient safety programs
Perinatal care is a high-volume service, accounting for one-fifth of all hospital stays. Yet it is also highly variable, with significant differences in complication rates for both vaginal and cesarean deliveries between hospitals nationwide.
This toolkit is designed to help hospitals seize the opportunity to strengthen perinatal patient outcomes. It includes best practices and resources collected from organizations that have successfully improved labor and delivery care by reducing clinical variability.