Broadlawns Medical Center maximizes efficiency with MEDITECH Labor and Delivery

When Broadlawns Medical Center (Des Moines, IA) noticed a significant rise in births in their Labor and Delivery department, the 200-bed licensed safety net hospital saw an opportunity to improve care and better serve their community by revamping their Birthing Center. In August of 2020, the unit was both remodeled and expanded, adding more beds and expanding the number of nurse midwives to facilitate the rise in births.

While the expansion allowed Broadlawns to accommodate for the uptick in births in their community, the addition of more providers, resources, and space only resulted in increased demand for their center. While the site averaged just under 300 births in 2015, the number approached almost 900 by 2023. With the number of births tripling, their Labor and Delivery unit needed more than just space. They needed to enhance their OB clinician efficiency to accommodate this influx of patients, which meant revising their cumbersome documentation processes.

Prior to going LIVE with MEDITECH’s Labor and Delivery solution in early 2022, nurses would complete patient admissions and general requirements in MEDITECH Expanse, only to then switch to a different system entirely to continue documenting. Double documentation proved to be a major concern, resulting in unnecessary time demands and interruptions during transitions of care.

Broadlawns decided to integrate MEDITECH’s Labor and Delivery solution with their GE Centricity Perinatal solution to eliminate double documentation and increase time savings overall. 

“The MEDITECH/GE integration was the best go-LIVE I’ve been part of in 18 years of nursing,” shared Anne Pederson, RN, BSN, RNC-OB, C-EFM, Nurse Supervisor at Broadlawns’ Family Birthing Center.

With this integration, the two systems work together seamlessly to support end-user workflow.  Staff no longer need to print out a delivery summary record and scan it into MEDITECH. Now all the data documented in GE – including date/time of delivery, duration of stage 1 labor, etc. – flows directly into the MEDITECH system. This data documentation is combined with admissions assessments and recovery/post-delivery and postpartum assessments documented in MEDITECH to produce a complete medical record for the delivery process and care. Likewise, medication administrations documented on the MEDITECH MAR flow back into GE. 

“Now, charting off the strip is efficient and saves significant time,” Pederson added. “The ability to have documentation done from within GE on the strip and flow in real-time to MEDITECH for a complete record alleviated our prior workflow where we were duplicating documentation of our mom’s labor.”

Broadlawns’ improved Birthing Center not only means a private and supportive atmosphere for new moms and babies, but an integrated solution that eases the burden on clinicians and gives them back valuable time to care for their patients.

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