Newsweek Names NorthBay Among Best Maternity Hospitals
NorthBay Medical Center was recently named one of the nation’s Best Maternity Hospitals by Newsweek Magazine. It is one of just 231 hospitals in 36 states to make the list.
Newsweek partnered with The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization that reports on the safety and quality performance of U.S. health care facilities, to create the list. The Leapfrog Group uses data voluntarily submitted by health care facilities to the annual hospital survey. Leapfrog also deploys teams of experts and analysts to review available data and identify high performers.
“If you're thinking about starting or expanding your family, you know that what matters most is the health of mother and baby,” noted Newsweek. “The facilities cited by Newsweek as Best Maternity Hospitals 2020 are an elite group demonstrating excellence in maternity care.”
Katie Lydon, NorthBay Healthcare’s director of Women and Children’s Services, called the honor an “exciting validation” of the work NorthBay physicians, nurses and care teams have done to make the hospital a great place to have a baby.
“We have been focused on creating a patient safety culture that implements bundles and toolkits to ensure we are ready for every emergency,” she said. “Our teams have trained together through quarterly simulations that have been attended by 90 to 94 percent of our nursing teams since 2016 year over year. A patient should never have to worry about being safe in the hospital, especially when they are having a baby. But the United States has much higher mortality rates than any other industrialized country. In fact, 50,000 women are harmed in childbirth in the U.S. every year.”
She added that she is proud to have seen her team in emergencies “continually give it their all to improve communication, streamline interventions, and improve outcomes” for mothers and babies and said, “NorthBay really is a great place to have a baby. Now, thanks to Newsweek, the entire country knows it.”