Paul Batalden, a famous pediatrician and healthcare researcher, once said that everybody in healthcare has two jobs: to do your work and to improve your work. Continuous quality improvement is the backbone of any successful medical practice, and it is no different at Maine Neonatology Associates. Our physicians participate alongside the NICU staff and families in quality-improvement initiatives to improve the care of the infants and families, both inside and outside of the hospital.
Maine Neonatology Associates has engaged in many projects with the Vermont Oxford Network (VON), the preeminent quality-improvement institution in newborn medicine, for more than twenty years. Projects focused on improving care of infants’ premature lungs, reducing complications of extremely premature infants born before 28 weeks gestation, and easing the process of admission from the delivery room to the NICU are all examples of large-scale projects that have improved the health outcomes of our most fragile infants.
In addition to our work with VON, Maine Neonatology Associates participates in improvement projects focused on opioid exposed newborns and reducing unnecessary antibiotics. We are also active participants in the Maine Perinatal Quality Improvement initiatives and the March of Dimes. The projects that we’ve been involved in have been presented at both regional and national scientific research meetings.
Please ask us about which quality-improvement projects are ongoing in the NICU, and how you can get involved!