Grant: Operating Grant

There are considerable differences in maternal-newborn care practices and patient outcomes across Ontario. Much progress has been made in measuring the quality of care in hospitals. Less is known however, about why some hospitals improve or get worse over time and how they change and address problems in performance when they are identified. The goal of this study is to identify factors that influence use of a new alerting system, the Maternal Newborn Dashboard (MND) that has recently been implemented in all 106 hospitals in Ontario, as an important step in identifying and improving performance. The objectives are to - Compare hospital performance on six key performance indicators before and after implementation of the MND. - Identify factors that influence use of the MND. - Identify factors that are most predictive of performance change after implementation of the MND. This study is important because almost 140,000 babies are born each year in Ontario and there are many opportunities for providing quality care as well as the potential for problems and increased costs if quality is not monitored and improved. Ontario has an innovative electronic audit and feedback system that allows maternal-newborn care centers to identify when evidence-based care is not occurring - one of the first steps towards quality improvement.