The Tanner Maternity Centers in Carrollton and Villa Rica have earned designations as Centers of Excellence in Education and Training for Families Affected by Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome from the Vermont Oxford Network (VON).
With a focus on improving health outcomes for newborns and advancing the quality of trauma-informed maternity care, this designation supports Tanner's comprehensive approach to maternity care, training doctors and nurses to provide better support for babies, mothers and their families.
One of the requirements for this recognition includes having Tanner's maternity care team train to care for substance-exposed infants, which the department has set as an ongoing goal with its patient care team.
Amanda Nguyen, MD, a board-certified pediatrician, helped champion the award for the health system and is helping shape the training at Tanner.
"Unfortunately, substance abuse is a common issue in many communities, and it can affect babies born at our hospitals, where many of those infants may have to stay for an extended time receiving treatment," said Dr. Nguyen.
One of the primary goals in receiving recognition is to extend training to the entire multidisciplinary team, including doctors, nurses, case managers, behavioral health specialists, respiratory therapists and other maternity care team members.
In addition to clinical training, this designation also trains teams to encourage parents to be more active in their infant's care, preparing them to care for their newborn when they return home.
"While withdrawal symptoms improve while a baby is in our care, they don't completely go away until several weeks later," said Dr. Nguyen. "We want to ensure that our caregivers and parents are actively involved in the babies' care and that parents can continue caring for their baby when they go home. Making sure that parents have the support they need is essential to the success of our program."
Neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS, is a group of problems that happen when an infant has been exposed to certain drugs or other addictive substances — including opioids and alcohol — while in the womb and begins experiencing withdrawal symptoms after birth.
Because a mother and their infant are attached in utero, certain drugs can pass through the placenta that connects them, and a baby can become dependent along with its mother.
Babies born with NAS require a higher level of care than most infants. Many newborns with NAS receive care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because they are at higher risk of experiencing respiratory complications, difficulty feeding, low birth weights and long-term health and development issues, such as speech, hearing and vision problems and learning and behavior issues.
It's critical that parents-to-be speak with their doctor as soon as possible if they are pregnant or planning a pregnancy and have questions or concerns about NAS.
"Over time, we hope to have this program more widespread in the community in a way that helps us improve care and support for babies as well as their mothers, including the time during pregnancy or even as they are considering becoming pregnant," said Dr. Nguyen.
As a global leader in data-driven quality improvement for newborn care, Vermont Oxford Network provides multi-center quality improvement collaborations and resources to help clinical care teams improve on the most critical and complex challenges facing newborn caregivers.
According to Vermont Oxford Network, Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton and Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica were two of 15 hospitals in the state to achieve this designation.
Tanner's participation in this program was made possible by The Georgia Perinatal Quality Collaborative (GaPQC), which partnered with VON to provide 47 hospitals across the state with universal training designed to standardize care policies. Learn more about GaPCQ and VON.
To learn more about maternity care at Tanner, find a doctor and more, visit TannerMaternityCare.org.