VIA Maternity Center At Doylestown Hospital Earns Designation Awards

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The VIA Maternity Center at Doylestown Hospital is a recipient of the Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative (PA PQC) inaugural Designations Awards presented at its annual conference in Harrisburg in May.

The designation signifies the hospital has established multidisciplinary teams that have demonstrated improvements in maternal and newborn care by sharing best practices and data in their hospital and community.

Hospitals had the opportunity to earn a designation for each 2023-24 PA PQC initiative that they actively participated in including: Immediate Postpartum Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (IPLARC), substance use disorders (SUD), and substance exposed newborn (SEN).

“This is a great achievement,” said Carol Chwal, director of maternal and child services at Doylestown Health. “I’m excited that the VIA Maternity Center at Doylestown Hospital and our commitment to provide the highest quality care to mothers and newborns is being recognized by the PA PQC.”

The VIA Maternity Center at Doylestown Hospital earned bronze designations to recognize its work in the issue areas of SUD and SEN. A bronze designation signifies the hospital met the required quality improvement submission criteria for at least 2 of the 4 quarters.

Designation awards and levels are based on meeting quality improvement milestone criteria over a 12-month period, starting from April 2023 through March 2024.

In Pennsylvania, perinatal health issues persist, including racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes, higher than average maternal sepsis rates, and drug overdose deaths during pregnancy and postpartum.

The PA PQC addresses these challenges through various initiatives, including Maternal Opioid Use Disorder, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, Maternal Sepsis, and Safe Sleep. Through collaborative efforts, the PA PQC aims to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes across the state.

The PA PQC is administered by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and WHAMglobal, and it is affiliated with the Northeast PQC (NEPaPQC).