Insurers Prod Doctors, Hospitals to Stop Elective Early Deliveries, Essay Example

The author of “Insurers Prod Doctors, Hospitals To Stop Elective Early Deliveries” discusses that conventionally, health care professionals measure the health of newborns based on their need for intensive care (Galewitz, 2013). However, this existing definition fails to consider the occurrence of feeding, breathing, and developmental problems. The quality measures that were utilized that led to the recommendation that early elective deliveries should be stopped include the high percentage of early deliveries that result in infant health problems compared to deliveries that occur at 39 weeks in addition to the high ratio of women who deliver at less than 39 weeks compared to the recommendation. As a consequence of this observation, hospitals suggest that it would be helpful to maintain a goal of less than 5 percent patients receiving early delivery. However, these goals remain unmet in many instances.

Although the hospitals involved in this study utilized ratios and percentages of newborns with health problems as a consequence of early delivery as a measure of quality, other measures that could have been included are an assessment of long-term health problems using this same method. It is essential to determine whether the initial health defects seen in these newborn patients is a lasting effect because this will help both physicians and new parents assess whether early delivery should be allowed or eliminated on the basis of evidence. Furthermore, the accuracy of these numbers should be determined. It is essential to compare these percentage values and ratios to national and state averages to determine whether these results are externally valid. Lastly, it would be helpful to make several different measurements of this sort over time to ensure that the collected results are consistent.

References

Galewitz P. (2013). Insurers Prod Doctors, Hospitals To Stop Elective Early Deliveries. KHN. Retrieved from http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/January/22/elective-early-births.aspx?p=1