Maternal Care Outcomes Improved by Elevance Health Programs and Partnerships

Contributing experts: Adrienne McFadden, MD, JD, and Jeff Plante

Elevance Health’s affiliated health plans support 1 in 8 babies born in the U.S.¹ This presents a significant opportunity to work with care providers to improve the lives of their patients who are pregnant.

To positively influence maternal care outcomes, reduce gaps in care, and lower costs, we've enhanced programs across lines of business and expanded partnerships with virtual care providers.

Our Building Healthy Families program offers maternity support to our Commercial consumers, while our Concierge Care program serves consumers with Medicaid health plans. Both programs have added access to digital educational resources and the ability to link to care management resources and support bidirectional information sharing between patients and care management staff.

Doulas and Care Partnerships Reducing Maternal Health Disparities

Addressing health disparities in maternity care requires a deep commitment. To support this, we're focusing on health equity for mothers and infants by collaborating extensively with March of Dimes. This effort includes offering implicit bias training to frontline workers and care provider partners during 2023 and 2024.

Partnerships with external programs such as Pomelo offer resources to support women who are most at risk for health disparities as well.

Pomelo is a virtual care provider that works with Elevance Health to provide 24/7 pregnancy and infant care, virtually and in person. Each person is assigned a dedicated care team that works with our existing member- and care provider-facing services.

Nearly 60% of the care provided by Pomelo happens outside traditional clinic hours with virtual care teams responding to requests in less than seven minutes on average. More than 500 members have tried Pomelo since it launched in January 2024, and reviewers report their satisfaction rates at 4.9 out of 5 or better.²

Community-based doulas are crucial for supporting women at risk for maternal health inequities. They provide information, education, and physical, social, and emotional support throughout pregnancy and postpartum. Doula care improves maternal health outcomes by reducing caesarean and preterm births, lowering postpartum depression, and enhancing breastfeeding rates.³

Certified Doula Care Helps Improve Maternal and Infant Health

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Improved maternal and infant health outcomes are in reach if we can work together across the healthcare system and break down barriers to high-quality care. Together with Elevance Health, we have been able to reach consumers at high risk of birth complications with high-quality prenatal care — supporting the delivery of healthy babies to healthy parents through the power of telemedicine. The strong outcomes we’ve seen are thanks to our shared vision and commitment to patients.

Marta Bralic Kerns,

CEO and Founder, Pomelo Care

Learn how doulas make a difference in the lives of parents and their babies.

Dr. Tiffany Inglis:

From 2018 to 2020, we saw a significant rise in maternal mortality rates. But they rose more for Black women and Hispanic women and people of color. We did a study with the Elevance Health programs in three different markets that were early doula programs. And what we found was they were less likely to need inpatient services during their pregnancy. They were less likely to have a pre-term birth. And not only does it work for people as a whole, it seems to very much positively impact people of color.

Nicky Dawkins:

I'm Nicky Dawkins. I've been a certified doula going on six years now. As a doula, I help people who are pregnant with advocacy, education, and just general support. I think the beautiful thing about doula care is that it's continuous care for the parents. So, we're not just there when they birth, but we're also there for them after they birth and before they birth, and pretty much all the things that come in between. Today we're hosting an event for the moms so they can actually connect with each other. Because after you have a baby, you tend to lose touch with the world.

Dr. Tiffany Inglis:

Doulas themselves are non-clinical. They're really there to be that support structure and to help be the voice and help the member or the person find their voice within their healthcare experience. And also, I think they help build community. And anyone who's had a child knows that you need it.

Nicky Dawkins:

Getting them on a path with somebody who is supportive of what they wanted to do made such a huge difference for them, like literal change in their personality of how much more supported they feel.

Program participant:

I felt supported as a woman. I felt supported as going through it as a first time mom.

Dr. Tiffany Inglis:

What this research has proven to us is that we do need to share it broadly and make sure that everyone understands the value of having access to doulas, whether that's through local access with training and certification, but also through policy around supporting doulas and having doulas be a part of this workforce.

Care Provider Enablement Programs Supporting Maternity Care Providers for Healthier Pregnancies

Care provider enablement and quality-improvement programs, like our Obstetrics Practice Consultant (OBPC) program and Obstetric Quality Incentive Program (OBQIP), continue to improve maternal health.

OBPCs are obstetric clinicians who collaborate with maternity care providers. They offer local, one-to-one support, connecting care providers, patients, and payers to provide timely, relevant data.

OBQIP offers financial incentives to care providers to improve access, quality of care, and birth outcomes for Medicaid consumers during pregnancy and postpartum.

These programs help reduce preterm-birth and low-birth-weight rates and improve postpartum visit compliance.

Care providers who collaborated with an Obstetrics Practice Consultant and took part in the Obstetric Quality Incentive Program between July 2020 and June 2022 delivered remarkable outcomes:⁴

20% Decrease

in low-birth-weight deliveries

12% Decrease

in preterm births

5% Decrease

in total birth costs

13% Increase

in timeliness of prenatal care

Award-Winning Care Provider Support

Social drivers of health can impact certain pregnancy risk factors, such as obesity, maternal morbidity and mortality, higher C-section rates, and other outcomes.

Because of the dedication of our OBPCs to improve maternal health outcomes and support care providers with value-based data, Elevance Health was recognized with a 2023 Innovation Award from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

Hear Elevance Health’s Tiffany Inglis, MD, National Medical Director, Carelon Medical Benefits Management, discuss the program and designation on NCQA’s Quality Matters podcast.

By building on successful programming, we have the potential to become a leading healthcare platform for expectant mothers. Enhancing maternity supports by integrating data and analytics with whole-health virtual tools and care enablement shows significant improvement in care delivery and experiences for families.

Maternal Care Outcomes Improved by Elevance Health Programs and Partnerships

Doulas and Care Partnerships Reducing Maternal Health Disparities

Certified Doula Care Helps Improve Maternal and Infant Health

Care Provider Enablement Programs Supporting Maternity Care Providers for Healthier Pregnancies

20% Decrease

12% Decrease

5% Decrease

13% Increase

Award-Winning Care Provider Support

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