S.2637 The Quality Care for Moms and Babies Act
INTRODUCED BY: SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI) 04/10/2018
The Quality Care for Moms and Babies Act would improve the resources health providers need to deliver high-quality maternity care by:
- Identifying gaps in maternity care quality measures in Medicaid and CHIP. This bill would direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to work with key providers, specialty organizations, consumer organizations, and other stakeholders to identify existing gaps in care for childbearing women and newborns and develop and publish a core set of maternity care quality measures.
- Developing and utilizing maternity Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Maternity surveys. The CAHPS surveys measure experience of care but lack a quality of care component. This bill would direct the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to work with relevant stakeholders to revise the existing CAHPS survey to include quality measures for maternal and newborn care.
- Expanding maternity care quality collaboratives. A quality collaborative is a group of stakeholders, such as physicians, nurses, and midwives, working to improve health systems and reduce healthcare costs. This bill would expand the development of quality collaborates with a focus on maternal and perinatal care. Activities led by quality collaboratives have led to improvements in maternal and newborn outcomes by reducing cesarean births, length of hospital stays, and visits to NICUs.
Co-sponsors: Senators Jack Reed (D-RI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ)