Updates

September 27, 2023

Hospital teams gathered for the final learning session of the clOUDi initiative hearing from a variety of speakers, and sharing lessons learned, barriers faced, and obstacles overcome. One of the highlights of the day was a talk by David Ryan of ECU on 'the work you do matters'...

August 18, 2023

Hospitals continue to work on improving and standardizing their Safe Sleep education and have partnered with Cribs for Kids to obtain Safe Sleep Certification. Hospitals that have received Cribs for Kids Safe Sleep Certification so far can be found here

July 24, 2023

disparities

This is the first PQCNC project to incorporate inpatient and outpatient care teams. We started this project knowing that with maternal opioid use disorder, both maternal and child health outcomes improve when we approach care as a mother-baby dyad. To quote Matt Grossman, “Mom is the best Medicine”.  We as PQCNC teams have focused on standardizing the use of evidence based tools to screen for substance use, encouraged the adoption of Eat Sleep and Console for postpartum  and pediatric teams, and we have all continued to share the evidence that access to treatment (including medications!) improves outcomes for the mother-baby dyad health during pregnancy and through 12months postpartum.
However, not everyone in our state is benefiting from these changes. Pregnant and postpartum people of color are not receiving the same benefits. On the national level, though Black Americans experience substance use disorders at the same prevalence rate as non-Hispanic Whites, they continue to have disproportionate barriers to accessing treatment (National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2021). 
That deserves repeating, though non-Hispanic Whites and Black Americans experience the same amount of substance use disorders, Black Americans have less access to treatment. When we look at our state level, we see the same trends. An evaluation of access to medications for Opioid Use Disorder showed that pregnant people of color (non-White) had significantly lower rates of MOUD utilization than White pregnant individuals (Tak et al, 2022).
Why? There are likely multiple reasons this disparity persists. Racism, access, and lack of trust in accepting a referral are well described factors. The “why” of cLOUDi is the “why” of all PQCNC work. The mother-baby dyad is paramount in all initiatives. So as we approach this final push in cLOUDi, the question for teams to consider are the following:
1. Are we aware of racial disparities in our referral rates of mothers for Opioid Use Disorder?
2. If present, how can we address our dispairities locally? 
July 10, 2023

Some early success with Naloxone! By the end of June some facilities have been able to go live with providing Naloxone to their at risk patients but for others it remains a tough nut to crack - one difficulty being finding a financial pathway that would secure access to Naloxone at no additional cost to families

June 20, 2023

Teams are busy with the additional goals for clOUDi 3 including depression screening focusing on staff education, rollout, and ensuring there's a follow-up processing place for patients who score high

May 25, 2023

Some teams are discovering in the process of hard-wiring their safe sleep patient / family education that a barrier to a good reliable process is that nursing staff may not have adequate education and a result have created additional staff education to provide solid foundational knowledge...

May 8, 2023

After the frank presentation at the April learning session demo the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner some teams reached out directly to receive facility-specific data re: infant deaths. Those facilities have been sharing that data with their team and discussing their numbers as a part of their safe sleep education for staff - a good example of how data can have an impact!

April 7, 2023

What a day it was, highlights of a packed agenda for LS2 included hearing from folks with lived experience, a frank presentation from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, learning about Cribs for Kids and the programs they offer, as well as afternoon workshops on quality improvement techniques and motivational interviewing. It was a room full of teams committed to the idea that in providing the best possible care for patients/families affected by this initiative actions are more important than words - was your team there?

March 15, 2023

10 hospitals are currently exploring use of the safe sleep calculator to help their patients better understands the risks, and how risks can be lessened through behavior change. On the latest webinar they've shared what they've learned about their patients knowledge and concerns (by talking to them!) and are now exploring a 'paper' version of the calculator...

March 10, 2023

It's March and teams in the Safe Sleep cohort deep into exploratory / qualitative research, checking in to learn about concerns around discharge and knowledge of Safe Sleep to begin to understand how to deploy the calculator in the most useful way...

Pages