Submitted by kmcochran on
The Joint Commission is retiring the Perinatal Care (PC) core measure PC-05a: Exclusive breast milk feeding considering mother’s initial feeding plan, effective with October 1, 2015, discharges. Feedback from key stakeholders – including health care organizations, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric & Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), and The Joint Commission’s Perinatal Care Technical Advisory Panel – indicates that capturing data on the mother’s preferences to not exclusively breast feed has been challenging. Also, some organizations may be concentrating on data collection as much or more than on strategies to increase exclusive breast milk feeding. The retirement of PC-05a allows hospitals to focus their resources on improving rates for PC-05: Exclusive breast milk feeding. Performance on this measure continues to be below 50 percent at approximately half of Joint Commission accredited hospitals.