Georgia’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) is a multidisciplinary committee comprised of approximately 30 health care providers, public health professionals, and community-based organizations to review all deaths that occur during pregnancy or within one year of the end of pregnancy and provide recommendations for prevention. The MMRC was codified in 2014 and has completed case reviews and published findings for pregnancy-associated deaths that occurred from 2012-2014.
The MMRC was established by the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). DPH provides programmatic oversight for the MMRC and epidemiologic support. DPH contracts with the Georgia Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (GOGS) to abstract medical records, prepare case summaries, and coordinate MMRC meetings. To achieve the project outcomes, DPH will hire a MMRC Project Manager to provide project management and serve as a liaison between the MMRC, the abstractors, the epidemiologists, and the program staff.
DPH will ensure a comprehensive case identification and abstraction process within one year of the date of death. DPH will enhance the current case identification and abstraction process by using data from other public health surveillance systems and databases, including the Violent Death Reporting System, the Trauma Registry, the Cancer Registry, hospital discharge data, and Medicaid data. An Epidemiologist and Technical Developer will create a module in the State Electronic Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (SendSS) to store the data prior to importing it into the Maternal Mortality Review Information Application (MMRIA). Two interviewers will be hired to perform key informant interviews to gather contextual information from family members, friends and caregivers on the events surrounding the death. Expanding the data used to inform the review process will enable the MMRC to better understand the social determinants of health, and make stronger recommendations at the community level.
The MMRC will conduct a timely review of pregnancy-associated deaths by reviewing deaths within two years of the date of death. The MMRC will operate in two concurrent sections to decrease the amount of time from when a death is identified to when it is reviewed.
Data from MMRIA will be reported annually and disseminated to a diverse group of stakeholders. Based on the annual reports, DPH will leverage partnerships to implement clinical and non-clinical recommendations of the MMRC through the Georgia Perinatal Quality Collaborative (GaPQC). GaPQC will continue to implement the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) patient safety bundles for Obstetric Hemorrhage and Severe Hypertension, and work towards the adoption of more patient safety bundles. GaPQC will also establish a Prevention and Community Health Subcommittee to implement non-clinical recommendations from the MMRC.
