Engaging Patients

Research continues to show that patient and family engagement can improve many aspects of health care performance including quality, safety, financial performance, patient experience of care, patient outcomes, and employee satisfaction. 

As national data from the Centers for Disease Control has shown, maternal mortality and morbidity are on the rise here in the United States. More states are focused on quality improvement initiatives to drive research into the leading causes of maternal mortality and morbidity.

What was needed was a united voice of maternal health advocates – patient-focused organizations and individual advocates representing the “lived experience” dedicated to improving outcomes from complications of pregnancy. To that end, we created the MOMMAs Voices program, the first-ever maternal health patient advocates program bringing together real patient and family voices, made up of dozens of maternal health organizations who represent all types of maternal health conditions, as well as cross-cutting topics like maternal mental health, racial equity, healthcare delivery, and patient-provider partnership. MoMMAs Voices, and the partnering organizations that comprise it, sit at the center of maternal health improvements, connecting and training patients with lived experiences, providers, quality improvement leaders, researchers, and policymakers to move forward improvements in maternal care.

These coalition members are focused on some of the leading causes of pregnancy and postpartum complications including,

• amniotic fluid embolism, 
• placenta accreta, 
• deep vein thrombosis, 
• cardiomyopathies, 
• maternal mental health, 
• obstetric hemorrhage,
• preeclampsia/HELLP syndrome, and

cross-cutting issues like racial and ethnic disparities in maternal health.

 By bringing representatives of these conditions and issues together under the umbrella of a single coalition, we will allow for a stronger, more effective patient voice to raise awareness, and more importantly drive solutions that include a renewed push for data collection and analysis, implementation of quality improvement initiatives, policy solutions, and integration of the patient voice in all initiatives which address this growing national problem.

Together with our partner organizations, MoMMAs Voices lead the way to train and support patient advocates through in-person and virtual training opportunities to share their lived experience effectively. We then help match-make qualified patient representatives with states and hospitals working toward QI to improve healthcare for all moms and their babies.

There are many benefits to working with patient and family partners in quality improvement work, including:

• Patient and families think like their peers. The medical staff may have lived experiences, but not necessarily thinking from that perspective when doing quality improvement. This causes them to potentially not see perspectives that may be obvious to parents and patients.
• Patient Family Partners are going to engage other patients and family in the work of education from a peer-to-peer perspective. This is a benefit to medical organizations because patient and families listen to others who have lived through similar experiences.
• Patient Family Partners save you time and money. Teams who embed patient and families reach their goals sooner.
• Patient Family Partners keep the conversations centered around things that patient and families deem important as well.
• Patient Family Partners improve safety.
• Patient Family Partners improve patient experiences.

Looking for a patient representative for your quality improvement initiative? Contact MoMMAs Voices today.