CONTEXT The perinatal period is one during which health care services are in high demand. Like other health care sub-sectors, perinatal health care delivery has undergone significant changes in recent years, such as the integrative wave that has swept through the health care industry since the early 1990s. PURPOSE The present study aims at reviewing scholarly work on integrated perinatal care...

The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist (SCC) was developed to ensure the delivery of essential maternal and perinatal care practices around the time of childbirth. A research collaboration was subsequently established to explore factors that influence use of the Checklist in a range of settings around the world. This analysis article presents an overview of the WHO SCC Collaboration and the lessons ...

OBJECTIVE Investigation of the implementation and results of the national term perinatal mortality audit. DESIGN Population-based cohort study. METHOD Perinatal audits were carried out in all 90 Dutch hospitals with obstetric departments together with the surrounding midwifery practices. These audits involved cases of term perinatal mortality. Various registries were used to collect data re...

Introduction. In Netherlands, the obstetric care system is divided into primary and secondary care by risk level of the pregnancy. We assessed the incidence of preterm birth according to level of care and the association between level of care at time of labor onset and delivery and adverse perinatal outcome. Methods. Singleton pregnancies recorded in Netherlands Perinatal Registry between 1999 ...

To develop this certification program, Joint Commission staff convened a perinatal care technical advisory panel of clinical experts for guidance on creating requirements for the evaluation of organizations seeking perinatal care certification. Field reviews, learning visits, and pilot surveys also helped staff learn the current state of perinatal care services, determine the concepts or proces...

The relationship between perinatal outcome and antenatal care was investigated at King Edward VIII Hospital, Durban, by a case control retrospective study of pregnancy records in 165 perinatal deaths and 156 infants surviving the perinatal period. 82% of the mothers of live infants had booked for antenatal care compared with only 60% of those who experienced a perinatal death. Hospital booking ...

In view of the importance of anticipating the occurrence of critical situations in medicine, we propose the use of a fuzzy expert system to predict the need for advanced neonatal resuscitation efforts in the delivery room. This system relates the maternal medical, obstetric and neonatal characteristics to the clinical conditions of the newborn, providing a risk measurement of need of advanced n...