The Lancet Maternal Health Series: “Beyond Too Little, Too Late and Too Much, Too Soon”

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By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

The Lancet Maternal Health Series published last month contains six papers highlighting the importance of improving access to high quality maternal health care for all women across the globe. In paper 2, “Beyond too little, too late and too much, too soon: A pathway towards evidence-based, respectful maternity care worldwide,” Miller and colleagues examine two extremes in global obstetric care: Too little, too late and too much, too soon…read more

Ensuring Quality in Private Maternity Care

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By: Bulbul Sood, Jhpiego India; Frank Kaharuza, AOGU; Hema Divakar, FOGSI; Naveen Rao, Merck for Mothers

One of the most challenging areas of maternal health is measuring, improving and assuring quality of care. Measuring the quality of maternal health care can be particularly difficult, especially surrounding labor and delivery. Maternal mortality and morbidity outcomes can be misleading indicators of quality, and data on the content of care is extremely limited. For private maternity care providers, investing in continuous quality measurement and improvement can be a real hurdle. Particularly for small, independent providers, time is money and taking on complex, continuous quality improvement processes is unrealistic. However, our experience working with private providers demonstrates that they are eager to invest in quality improvement measures…read more