Lutheran Medical Center is one of the founding hospitals of the CHoSEN Quality Improvement Collaborative. Jillian Adams, director of strategic initiatives for Illuminate Colorado sat down with Dr. Erica Wymore to discuss how she and the team at Lutheran Medical Center are utilizing their electronic health record (EHR) system to support their hospital’s CHoSEN practice changes, particularly related to breastfeeding practices.
Dr. Wymore is the Medical Director of the Newborn ICU at Lutheran Medical Center, a faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and a member of the Steering Committee for CHoSEN QIC has been part of this effort from the beginning, continuing to innovate around supporting opioid-exposed newborns and their families.
The Challenge: Communication Across Mother and Infant Provider Teams
Examination of data across CHoSEN hospitals revealed variability among breastfeeding rates for substance-exposed newborns, leading to a desire to improve these rates among mother-infant dyads affected by a substance use disorder.
To begin addressing this need, Lutheran Medical Center worked to create a process map to help them understand, reflect on, and identify room for improvement in their policies and procedures for determining a dyad’s breastfeeding eligibility and effectively and consistently communicating it between providers and to families.
Engaging in this process led to the identification of a challenge with ensuring that important information from the mother’s medical record and provider team is reflected in the infant’s medical record and shared with the infant’s provider team.
The Solution: Ask What Your EHR System Can Do for You
With this challenge identified, the team at Lutheran began collaborating with their electronic health record provider to develop improved and automated workflows within their EHR system to ensure that important information related to a mother-infant dyad’s breastfeeding eligibility is available in all of the necessary places. Watch the interview with Dr. Wymore to learn more about how Lutheran Medical Center developed their process map and is working with their EHR provider to create new workflows.
Looking for Solutions for your Hospital?
If your site is interested in implementing similar innovations, Dr. Wymore advises developing a process map to identify your hospital’s key players and then working to provide clear and consistent education that will ensure families affected by prenatal substance exposure receive the best and most consistent care. CHoSEN QIC is able to support hospitals through these innovations by conducting a virtual site visit and helping teams with steps like developing a process map. To request and schedule a virtual site visit, contact Jessica Scott.
Additional Resources: