Mercy’s Family Life Center Recognized for Higher Quality and Cost-Efficiency in Maternity Care

Members of the Family Life Center team.

Good news for patients at Mercy Medical Center’s Family Life Center as the facility has been recognized by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts with a Blue Distinction® Centers+ (BDC+) for Maternity Care designation, as part of the Blue Distinction Specialty Care program. To earn this designation, each facility must deliver quality care, safely and cost-effectively.

The Blue Distinction Centers for Maternity Care program plays a key role in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s (BCBSA) National Health Equity Strategy aimed at reducing racial health disparities across the care spectrum and improving patient outcomes for all Americans. To align with this strategy, the Blue Distinction Centers for Maternity Care program recognizes higher-quality facilities that have taken action to respond effectively to obstetric emergencies, reduce racial disparities, and improve maternal health outcomes.

“At the Family Life Center, we place our patients and their families at the center of everything we do,” said Elizabeth Rottenberg, D.O., Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Director of the Family Life Center. “We are committed to providing every woman with a safe, high-quality birthing experience and this recognition underscores our success in meeting that goal.”

Based on data from the current reporting cycle, facilities designated under the Blue Distinction Centers for Maternity Care program demonstrate higher-quality care compared to non-Blue Distinction Center facilities, with overall average rates of 26% lower episiotomies, 60% fewer elective deliveries and 17% lower cesarean births—all of which point to healthier outcomes for patients. BDC+ designated facilities also exhibited an average savings of 21% for maternity care.

The Blue Distinction Centers for Maternity Care program’s selection criteria was created to close clinical care gaps and reduce inequities that persist throughout the maternal care spectrum. The selection criteria include components that dismantle the cultural, operational, and structural barriers that have created inequities that persist in maternal care, such as using evidence-based best practices to respond effectively to obstetric emergencies, offering unconscious bias training, having doula support available on the maternity care team, collecting race, ethnicity, and language data, having a program dedicated to quality improvements in maternal care, and running drills and simulations to prepare providers are prepared to deal with a range of obstetric emergencies.