Penn’s solution to health scares after childbirth starts with a text | Philly Health Insider
Plus, Jefferson opens a high-security hospital ward
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Good morning! Here in the dog days of summer, we’ve still got lots of health news for you:
Penn got new parents to track their blood pressure at home — which is helping health systems in Philly to avoid postpartum maternal scares.
Jefferson Frankford Hospital is opening a secure ward to treat prisoners from Philly’s understaffed city jails.
It is (unfortunately) tick season, and we’ve compiled data on Lyme and other insect-borne illnesses.
📮 Plus, U.S. News and World Report just released their annual hospital rankings. These rankings might look flashy on a billboard, but as health system workers or patients, do they matter to you? Do you think they are a valid take on institutions? Let us know in an email!
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— Aubrey Whelan, Inquirer health reporter, @aubreywhelan.
How do you cut down on cases of dangerously high blood pressure in the weeks after a person gives birth? Stop asking patients to come to a doctor’s office for blood pressure screenings — and instead allow them to measure their blood pressure at home.
A decade ago, two Penn physicians put this unorthodox idea into practice by sending new parents home with blood pressure cuffs and instructing them to text their results to their doctors.
The physicians’ hunch was that new parents are often too overwhelmed to get back to the hospital during their first days home — missing crucial opportunities to detect postpartum high blood pressure, a leading cause of maternal deaths. But the doctors thought they might be able to intervene sooner if patients kept in touch by text.
More than 18,000 patients have used the Heart Safe Motherhood program since 2014, and the results are clear: The program has nearly eliminated all hospital visits for blood pressure complaints in the week post-birth, and decreased racial disparities in this kind of care.
The program has since been established at all Penn hospitals, plus two Jefferson hospitals. Our colleague Sarah Gantz dug into how the program works and why it’s been so successful.
The latest news to pay attention to
It’s not just patients who have trouble keeping track of the costs of their health-care procedures, drugs, and devices. Major health systems often do, too. Now Temple is using patients’ electronic medical records — digging into minute details like the brand of a particular screw used in an orthopedic surgery — to get a better sense of how the health system spends money and can be more efficient.
Suburban Community Hospital, whose financial struggles have led hospital execs to rent out its empty floors as movie and TV sets, downsized into a 60-bed micro-hospital on Tuesday, laying off 23 nurses in the process.
Next week, Jefferson Frankford Hospital is opening a new secure ward for incarcerated patients. It’s part of an effort to fix an understaffing crisis in Philadelphia’s prison system, which has become so dire that the city was recently held in contempt of court for not doing enough. Typically, incarcerated patients at hospitals have to be watched around the clock by two correctional officers each, but the new ward will allow for three to five officers to monitor up to nine patients at a time, freeing up more officers to work at the jails.
With sweltering temperatures expected again this week, the city of Philadelphia has declared a heat health emergency. Here are some articles to share with patients and loved ones about the high temperatures and staying safe in them.
The big number: 4,706.
That’s how many cases of Lyme disease have been reported in Pennsylvania — excluding Philadelphia, which keeps its own data — so far this year. (Philadelphia does not have updated numbers for 2024, but reported 402 cases last year.)
Chester County has the highest number of cases in Philly’s suburbs. And excluding Philadelphia (which has not published Lyme data from this year), the leafy county to our northwest is seeing more cases than anywhere else in the state, with 451 cases confirmed as of July 10.
In other insect-borne disease news, mosquitoes carrying West Nile have been found this year in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Chester, Bucks, and Delaware Counties. But no cases have turned up in humans so far.
Each week, we highlight state inspections at the various hospitals in our region. Up this week: Bryn Mawr Hospital, which is part of Main Line Health. This March, inspectors cited the hospital for failing to report a child sexual assault in September 2022.
Tami Benton, CHOP’s psychiatrist-in-chief, is on the front lines of a youth mental health crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. She’s also the president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which says the Philadelphia area doesn’t have enough psychiatrists who specialize in child and adolescent mental health.
Still, she’s optimistic: “I’ve never felt as hopeful and optimistic about the chance to support the development of a healthy generation of young people who can reach their potential. But we have to do it together,” she told The Inquirer in a recent interview.
Making moves
Amy Goldberg, a trauma surgeon and the dean of Temple’s medical school, has been selected as the chair of the American Board of Surgery.
Goldberg previously served as director of its governing board, according to a press release from the organization.
Bulletin board
Having covered the overdose crisis for many years, I am not often reading good news. But here’s some: Camden County is seeing a significant decrease in fatal overdoses. There was a 39% drop in deaths between January and July of this year, compared to last year, and the county also saw about a 17% drop in overdoses between 2022 and 2023.
As we continue reporting to learn what’s driving these decreases, I’d love to hear from Camden County addiction doctors and harm reductionists about what’s working on your side of the river. 📮 Reply to this email with your experiences with overdose prevention measures in the area.
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