Statement by Betsy Ryan
President and CEO
on Leapfrog Data on Early Elective Deliveries

“New Jersey – as a state and as a community of healthcare providers – has devoted a great deal of attention to reducing early elective deliveries and it’s wonderful to see the results of that hard work reflected in these numbers.

“NJHA’s Institute for Quality and Patient Safety early on teamed with the New Jersey Department of Health in a statewide Perinatal Collaborative aimed at improving prenatal care and reducing pre-term births. In 2012, we took a bold move: We challenged every hospital in the state to adopt a policy that bars early elective deliveries before week 39. We’ve also made reducing early elective deliveries a major part of New Jersey’s Partnership for Patients effort, which is working with hospitals statewide to implement standardized best practices to make the care we provide better and safer for our patients.

“The results reflected here are very satisfying, not just because they show that our commitment and attention to this issue are yielding results, but also because it’s leading us to a generation of healthier moms and babies.”