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Early Elective Deliveries (EED)






22%

Percentage decrease in the rate of early elective deliveries – deliveries before 39 weeks – across participating hospitals.

85%

The number of hospitals achieving an EED goal of <5%.

Early Elective Delivery (EED) associated with adverse infant outcome and no known benefit to mother

Early Elective Delivery (EED), delivery before 39 weeks of gestation without medical or obstetrical indication, may result in higher rates of adverse respiratory outcomes, mechanical ventilation, sepsis and hypoglycemia for the newborns. Best practice recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and March of Dimes encourage the use of a hard stop against scheduling early elective deliveries. About 50 hospital teams participated in the Early Elective Delivery initiative worked from 2013-2014 to reduce early elective deliveries with support of Illinois Hospital Association and March of Dimes sponsored virtual boot camps and March of Dimes, National Quality Forum, AHRQ and the Joint Commission PC01 Manual. Participating hospitals were asked to provide data on the Joint Commission EED PC01 measure quarterly for 2013-2014 to the ILPQC Data System to monitor their progress over time and in comparison to other hospitals.

Initiative Aim and Outcome

  • 1.
    Reduce EED to <5% across >=95% of participating hospitals and improve ability for hospitals to compare accurate EED data across time and across other Illinois hospitals.

Objectives

  • 1.
    42 hospitals met the goal for <5% early elective deliverts in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014
  • 2.
    Decline in aggregate EED rate from 2.3% to 1.8% over course of the initiative