Who We Are
The Delaware Perinatal Quality Collaborative was established in 2011 as a subcommittee of the Delaware Healthy Mother and Infant Consortium (DHMIC). In 2019 the DPQC was established in state code as an organization in its own right. All 7 birthing institutions in Delaware are members of the DPQC. Achievements of the DPQC to date include the establishment of a maternal transport protocol, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) standards of care for mothers and babies, reductions in deliveries before 39 weeks when it is not medically indicated, and most recently, quality improvement efforts are under way due to a new federal grant to address obstetrical hemorrhaging, which is the major cause of maternal mortality.
What We Do
Data collection and analysis is crucial to the DPQC’s efforts to improve the care and outcomes of Delaware’s women and their babies. The foundation of the collaborative is to share current data to use for benchmarking and quality assurance/improvement, identify best standards of care/protocols, realignment of service providers and service systems, continuing education of professionals and increasing public awareness of the importance of perinatal care. Member organizations (i.e. hospitals) agree to collect and report specific data elements relevant to the clinical priorities selected by the DPQC.
Governance and Structure
The DPQC is constituted as an independent public instrumentality.
The collaborative is comprised of voting members appointed by member organizations. Each member organization has one representative.
The Collaborative has a Chair and a Vice Chair who are elected annually. A majority of the total voting membership forms a quorum.
Getting Involved
Who can participate in the DPQC?
The DPQC’s seeks to create a culture of collaboration across the six birthing hospitals in Delaware. DPQC realizes this culture of collaboration through cooperation and transparency across the perinatal health providers and specialties that include obstetrics, maternal-fetal medicine, neonatology, pediatrics, and stakeholders engaged in improving maternal and infant health (i.e., public health) care by bringing together the specific expertise of physicians, epidemiologists, nurses, nurse-midwives, quality improvement experts and all other practitioners involved in perinatal health outcomes.