OBHG's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Mark Simon, recently spoke with The American Journal of Managed Care about maternal mortality, implicit bias in healthcare, physician burnout and OB hospitalist medicine. Listen to the podcast interview here. Here are some highlight points Dr. Simon covered during the discussion:
Maternal mortality: "The other component you worry about in smaller facilities, whether they are urban or rural, is if they are not doing the same volume of activity (as many deliveries, as many high risk deliveries), you can get out of practice and not remember how to handle those or not be prepared to handle some of those high risk situations in a timely fashion."
Physician burnout: "One we have seen through our programs is that you see a lot of OBs who are excellent OBs, and instead of giving up those skills or getting out the business, they transition to becoming an OB hospitalist in segmented periods of time that are known and defined. It allows them to extend their careers as OB caregivers."
Implicit bias in healthcare: "Having a bias isn’t a bad thing, it’s recognizing that EVERYBODY, no matter what your background is, has biases. It’s acknowledging that they exist and being active to overcome these biases in clinical situations."
A successful OBHG program: "One of the key components is having an actively engaged OB team on labor and delivery."
Community physician collaboration: "The implementation of an OBHG program is no means a program that replaces the prenatal care that happens in the community by midwives or by physicians. We are really an adjunct and supportive service to that care by helping to ensure that the patients are the center of the delivery system and we are doing everything we can to empower them to have the safest delivery possible."