Blue Cross focuses on maternal health, announces core measures

This is part of a series of articles on health and health care disparities in Michigan.

The U.S. is the only industrialized nation with a continually rising maternal death rate. To help combat this trend, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has made maternal health one of its top priorities.

As we reported in a previous issue of this newsletter, Blue Cross — along with Blue plans across the country — is aligning with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association to help reduce racial disparities in maternal health by 50% in five years. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Office of Health and Health Disparities created a Maternal Health Workgroup last year with the charge of developing a plan to support reducing maternal health disparities across Michigan.

“In April 2021, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association implemented its National Health Equity Strategy with maternal health as an initial focus area. We immediately followed suit and added maternal health as one of our five focus areas for our health equity strategy,” said Bridget Hurd, vice president, Inclusion and Diversity, and lead for the Office of Health and Health Care Disparities.

“The disparities for maternal health are striking — for example, Black women are three times more likely to die from maternal complications — and Blue Cross has an opportunity to address and help reduce these disparities through policies, programs and practices in partnership with our providers, group customers and community organizations.”

In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. increased by almost 20%. The mortality rate was nearly 24 deaths per 100,000 live births compared to a rate of about 20 in 2019. Black women had the highest maternal mortality rate of the three racial or ethnic groups identified in a report* by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Core measures

In alignment with the Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s core measures will include:

• Severe maternal morbidity (unexpected outcomes from labor and delivery with significant short- or long-term consequences to a woman’s health) during delivery hospitalization and six-weeks postpartum
• Prenatal and postnatal care, including postpartum depression screening and follow‑up

We’re also exploring options for conducting unconscious bias education specific to maternal health.

The Maternal Health Disparities Workgroup is focused on the following action items:

• Identifying disparities, gaps in care and social determinants
• Establishing a baseline for core measures
• Developing and implementing specific goals for each core measure
• Tracking progress for each measure

Data review and analysis will be conducted by race and ethnicity, geographic region and socioeconomics.

“The understanding of various social factors impacting maternal health will lead to programs that improve clinical outcomes in this vulnerable population, said Dr. Michael Kobernick, senior medial director, Health Plan Business. “The Blue Cross clinical community is committed to providing unconscious bias training to the network, ensuring that depression screening is consistently performed, and support those with chronic disease.”

For more information

Webinar on maternal health disparities
Dr. Marti Walsh, M.D., medical director, Provider Engagement, discussed maternal health disparities in a Blue Cross Virtual Well-Being℠ member webinar May 5. The webinar has been archived and can be accessed by clicking on Past Webinars on the Members section of the Blue Cross Virtual Well-Being site.

Articles in our health and health care disparities series
To read more about what Blue Cross and health providers are doing to help eliminate inequities in health care delivery, check out these previous articles:

• Blue Cross launches Office of Health and Health Care Disparities
• Addressing implicit bias in health care can improve care delivery
• Social determinants of health
• Addressing health care disparities among people in the LGBTQ+ community
• Blue Cross commits to reducing racial disparities in maternal health
• Statewide Physician Diversity Council working to reduce health care disparities

*Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan doesn’t own or control this website.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network are nonprofit corporations and independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.