Relias Helps Hospitals Earn Texas Maternal Care Designation in Education and Training

New requirement impacts services and reimbursements.

MORRISVILLE, NC, September 16, 2019 – Relias, a trusted partner to more than 10,000 healthcare organizations around the world and across the continuum of care, congratulates client Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women for being one of the first three hospitals in Texas to earn a level IV designation, the highest level of care available.

Beginning Sept. 1, 2020, Texas will require the maternal level of care designation for all hospital providers that render neonatal/maternal inpatient services and receive Medicaid reimbursement for obstetrical services. The designation rule aims to push hospitals to make maternal care a top priority.

As highlighted in recent news, the U.S. has the highest maternal death rate among the world’s developed nations—a rate that continues to rise, while the death rate has been stable or falling in other developed countries. According to 2018 data, Texas is among the top 10 states with the highest maternal death rates in the country.

Relias OB helps hospitals improve patient safety and meet designation criteria by promoting teamwork and communication, a culture of safety through interdisciplinary standardized and validated evidenced-based framework, helping them reduce variation and move toward high reliability.

The Texas maternal mortality rate is costing not only lives, but healthcare dollars as well. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2014 54 percent of births in Texas were financed by Medicaid, tied for 10^th among all states.

“The impact of the Texas Maternal Care Designation on maternal mortality can’t be over-stated,” explained Jim Triandiflou, CEO of Relias, who attributes Relias OB’s success in improving patient safety with the solution’s focus on reducing variation in care. “Addressing variation in care is of the utmost importance as we work to improve patient safety and develop a culture of high reliability for one of our nation’s most vulnerable patient populations—our mothers and their babies.”

Relias OB’s personalized learning approach begins with a comprehensive assessment that provides insight into each learner’s knowledge, critical thinking and judgement. It then delivers personalized and prioritized content in easy-to-absorb, 2-8-minute learning segments developed by subject matter experts.

Organizations, like Texas Children’s, leverage the platform database to understand their variability and to benchmark at the individual, team and organizational level across more than 1,100 hospitals. Relias’ personalized learning leverages an assessment-driven proprietary algorithm to create a truly personalized and relevant learning plan, valuing what the clinician already knows.

This personalized learning platform is a thoroughly researched and validated assessment-driven education and analytics solution that helps organizations assess clinician’s (physician, nurses, mid-wives) knowledge and judgment and then deliver high-impact education for improving patient safety and reducing risk. Educational content targets high risk areas within the maternal/child specialty, such as: fetal assessment & monitoring, shoulder dystocia, obstetrical hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, and promoting vaginal birth.

More information on Relias OB can be found here.