In May 2024, the Step Up Together team at Primary Maternity Care (PMC) celebrated a significant milestone—the completion of our first Action Collaborative focused specifically on birth centers and their hospital partners. We’re thrilled to share that it was a resounding success!This collaborative effort adds to Step Up Together’s growing curriculum of programs aimed at driving quality improvement efforts and integration among hospitals and freestanding birth centers, a journey that began with the development of the Hospital Guide to Integrating the Freestanding Birth Center Model.
“We’ve talked about trying to replicate this experience, using the tools that we’ve gotten from this program at the different partner hospitals that we have in the community and the ways that we can integrate the transport team as well as EMS. The way that we, our hospital and EMS partners keep it going is that we keep talking.”
— Birth Center CNM
“We just had this experience [transfer scenario] last night and it wasn’t as scary to make that decision to call the NICU and to call EMS and get those things rolling. I feel like the drill really helped us to be better prepared. Those are scary things when you have situations with babies like that but it was pretty easy to make those calls and get things where they needed to be.”
— Birth Center RN
“I can’t imagine doing this as we open a new birth center without your guidance. It absolutely superseded my expectations.”
— Birth Center CNM
The 2024 Action Collaborative brought together 11 birth centers and their hospital partners from across the country with the objectives to:
- Strengthen relationships between hospital and community birth practices.
- Develop dyad-specific transfer guidelines, policies, and protocols for obstetric emergencies.
- Conduct, execute, and debrief Full Transfer Drills that start in the community, utilize emergency transport, and end up in the hospital.
- Increase competence in practice-specific drill components, with a focus on interdisciplinary roles, responsibilities, and quality improvement measures.
Over the course of seven online collaborative sessions, Step Up Together Faculty provided participants with the tools, coaching, and a supportive community needed to enhance and standardize their emergency transfer processes. We equipped them with intrapartum, postpartum, and neonatal Step Up Together Drill Implementation Toolkits (which we call Drill Kits for short), empowering them to conduct a Full Transfer Drill, all for the first time in their practice history!
The results were impressive: seven of the eleven teams (64%) successfully ran a Full Transfer Drill during the Action Collaborative, while several others implemented smaller or partial transfer drills. These drills not only strengthened emergency preparedness but also bolstered the confidence of participants in their ability to execute these critical processes effectively.
The Step Up Together faculty are inspired by the incredible collaboration and dedication demonstrated by the teams involved. This Action Collaborative is a testament to what we can achieve when we work together with a shared goal—making every pregnancy safe, no matter the setting.
As we celebrate this success, we’re excited to continue expanding our programs and engaging more teams in this vital work. Stay tuned for future opportunities to join our next Action Collaborative and be part of a movement that’s transforming maternity care for the better.
Let’s keep stepping up together!
Interested in sponsoring a Step Up Together Action Collaborative? Email us at stepup@primarymaternitycare.com.
“This is stuff we can actually use. You have the whole program written and done for us. We don’t have time to figure that all out. But it’s so important.”
– Birth Center CNM
“All hospitals oughta be… seeking out their birth centers and participating in a program like this and doing drills because it benefits everybody.”
– NICU Medical Director
“Loved the detail and organization. Felt very prepared running this quite elaborate and multi-level drill with all the people involved.”
– Birth Center CNM
Is your organization interested in sponsoring a future Action Collaborative? Please email us here!