All hands on deck (from a distance): remote care for traumatized moms and babies

Dear colleague,

Coronavirus is forcing providers and allied professionals serving mothers and babies to make unprecedented decisions. Should pregnant women needing care go through our hospital quarantine entrance? Should moms deliver without partners, family or doulas present? Be sent home early before key screenings or jaundice treatment are completed?

To make matters worse, our systems aren't ready for basic remote care of mothers and infants now "socially distanced". Prenatal, post-partum and well-baby visits are being cancelled or moved to phone but healthcare and most home visitors lack basic technology  and training to keep mothers educated, engaged, and healthy remotely. We all fear mental illness, deaths of despair, and pregnancy-related maternal mortality will rise from isolation and/or mis-steps.

If you're worried about trauma and outcomes induced by covid panic (including by our well-meaning healthcare and public health responses), please join this webinar tomorrow at 10am PACIFIC.

Hosted by Mahmee, a maternal-infant health care coordination platform committed to equity, we will discuss how to make adjustments to clinical workflows and triage prenatal and postpartum concerns. Best practices will be offered for identifying patients who should continue receiving in-clinic and in-home appointments vs. those who can and should have care managed virtually.

Mahmee was designed to help diverse practitioners collaborate and deliver comprehensive, women-centered virtual care. The session will include a brief walk-through of Mahmee's tools, including telehealth visits and support groups, charting and screening, secure messaging and file sharing, closed-loop referrals, and effective flagging of high-risk patients for care team escalation.  

This weekend Mahmee's leadership and I decided to make it free for all professionals and moms during this crisis. Telehealth shouldn't just be made available to those whose insurers or health systems can afford it!

Working together we can reduce the trauma burden of covid-19 and prevent an otherwise inevitable cascade into ACEs. I hope you'll join us tomorrow to discuss how we can get it done.