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The AHA and Epic are collaborating to help more hospitals consider adopting a set of tools to aid in the detection and treatment of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) — a serious and potentially life-threatening complication of childbirth.

PPH is responsible for 11% of maternal deaths in the United States and notably 40% of all such hemorrhages occur in patients without any risk factors. Point-of-care tools in the electronic health record (EHR) can help health care providers prevent, detect and treat PPH, ultimately saving lives and improving care for mothers across America.

“The ���������� Association and Epic share a deep commitment to improving health outcomes for moms and babies,” said Chris DeRienzo, M.D., AHA chief physician executive and a neonatologist. “This new collaboration amplifies our efforts to drive continuous improvement by sharing evidence-based resources to help reduce this tragic condition. It’s a natural extension of the AHA’s Patient Safety Initiative, a collaborative data-driven effort to highlight and learn from patient safety progress at hospitals and health systems around the country.”

The PPH toolkit, available to users of Epic’s Stork Obstetrics Information System, includes methods of assessing a mother’s risk of hemorrhage, a mechanism to continuously refresh risk assessments throughout the childbirth and postpartum periods, embedded guides to support clinical decision-making within clearly defined risk categories, and facilitate treatment of an acute hemorrhage, all within a clinician’s obstetric workflow. With the proper permissions from applicable content providers, users of any EHR should be able to implement a similar set of tools.

“Every mother deserves a safe childbirth experience,” said Jackie Gerhart, M.D., chief medical officer at Epic. “That’s why we’re working together to deliver proven, point-of-care tools that help clinicians prevent and manage postpartum hemorrhage. The goal of our joint effort is to help caregivers act quickly when every second counts.”

The collaboration will bring together experts from Epic’s customer community and the AHA's Patient Safety Initiative to increase awareness of this toolkit. Through this joint effort, the AHA and Epic can support hospitals in their implementation journey with programming, resources and a space to learn from each other and engage with hospitals already seeing successful outcomes with items that are included in the toolkit today. For example:

in Arkansas, which delivers around 6,800 babies yearly, implemented the developed by the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), maternal emergency narrator and a blood loss calculator in their EHR in three phases. Staff participated in hemorrhage drills to ensure that they mastered the tools to assist with treating a hemorrhaging patient.

(WakeMed), a nationally recognized not-for-profit health system based in Raleigh, North Carolina, is home to three full-service hospitals and birthing centers as well as a Level IV neonatal intensive care unit. With a commitment to deliver the best possible experience for every birthing person, baby and family, WakeMed reported 9,915 births during its 2024 fiscal year. Using the AWHONN postpartum risk assessment tool, a maternal emergency narrator and quantitative blood-loss calculator in the health system’s EHR, WakeMed has seen a consistent decrease in obstetric hemorrhage rates since 2022.