The Idaho Perinatal Project (IPP) is Retiring

The Idaho Perinatal Project (IPP) has been a statewide organization dedicated to improving the health of mothers and babies for over 40 years. The Idaho Perinatal Project first was housed in the Department of Health and Welfare and setup an active board representing organizations and health care specialists that cared for pregnant moms and babies in Idaho. Working with the staff of Health and Welfare there was a lot of work accomplished in the early years of improving communication between delivering hospitals and developing transfer criteria for both moms and babies. With the loss of some Federal Block Grant Funding, St. Luke’s Hospital at that time stepped forward to offer a home for the work of the Project and the advisory board.

All of our amazing board members and participating medical professionals have worked on very important issues and have raised the care of moms and babies addressing key issues that impacted maternal mortality and morbidity. Some issues addressed have been scope of practice of lay midwives and the passing of their scope of practice legislation, routine screen for Group B Strep for all women during pregnancy, and enhanced newborn screening to name a few.

IPP has offered the Idaho Perinatal Nurse Leadership Summit for over 30 years which has brought key nursing leaders from over 36 delivering hospital together to network, develop best practices, share problems and solutions, and most importantly established a strong peer network around the state which supports our nursing leaders throughout the year. IPP has also offered an outstanding conference, the Winter Conference, the largest perinatal conference in Idaho for over 35 years. This conference focused on maternal and newborn issues and bringing national experts to provide easy and affordable access to health care providers and other professionals that care of moms and babies as well as providing these professionals an opportunity to earn continuing education credit needed for their licensure requirements.

With the development of the Idaho Mortality and Morbidity Review Task Force established in 2019 we have been able to see the issues that impact the health of Idaho moms and babies. The next step statewide is to offer Maternal Safety Learning Collaboratives to develop best practices to make changes in care to prevent the death of moms and babies. The State of Idaho, under the leadership of Jennifer Liposchak, manager of women’s and infant’s health wrote for a HRSA AIM capacity grant. This will be used for implementation of the AIM Safety patient bundles over a 4-year cycle. The State has partnered with Comagine Health to establish Idaho’s Quality Collaborative (PQC). This PQC will bring clinical providers, public health leaders, payors, and community-based organizations together to improve the outcomes of pregnant women and their babies. This is an exciting step for the state.

As health care has dramatically changed during COVID, including the ability to access virtual and many times free CME, the need for a statewide conference has decreased. As hospitals are faced with financial challenges, including St Luke’s, the decision has been made to retire the existing advisory board and structure of the IPP. We will be closing the web site and the Nurse Summit and Winter Conference will not be offered again.

The hope is that all hospitals will join together under the direction of the Department of Health and Welfare to join the perinatal quality safety efforts. Hospitals who join the State Maternal Quality Collaborative can begin collecting data and sharing data working on quality projects to improve care. In the past, we have offered the educational programs and shared best protocols and practices, but never been able to measure if there was a change in clinical practice; these new efforts will enable hospitals to measure those changes and also outline other areas for additional work.

Please feel free to contact Sherry Iverson at iversons@slhs.org or Sarah Jacobson at jacobssa@slhs.org with any questions. Thank you for all of your support and participation throughout the years.

Warmly,
Sherry Iverson, Director
Sarah Jacobson, Program Coordinator