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In time for Mother’s Day, NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center announced the opening of the Mothers Center, a new space that will provide comprehensive, multidisciplinary care before, during and after a high-risk pregnancy, starting this summer. An innovative approach to maternal health care, the Mothers Center will consolidate all relevant specialists in the same location, where they can collaborate on individual patients’ care. It is the first of its kind in the country.

“The Mothers Center serves as a national model for providing expectant mothers with a single point of access to all of the subspecialists they may need during their pregnancy,” said Dr. Steven J. Corwin, president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian. “We are proud to offer the most comprehensive, collaborative and highest quality care available to optimize the health of women and their babies.”

The 5,300-square-foot outpatient center, located at the NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital campus on 165^th Street and Broadway, is home to four exam rooms, three consult rooms, and meeting spaces that foster collaboration and multidisciplinary care among specialists. Its construction was made possible by a generous gift from Carmen and John Thain.

“Mothers are often the heart and anchor of a family; if mom is sick or absent, the whole family suffers. Our job is to optimize the health of mom to the best of our ability, so that she can be healthy for her family and for herself,” said Dr. Mary D’Alton, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the visionary behind the Mothers Center. “I am grateful to Carmen and John Thain, NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center for their focus on maternal health and the opportunity to introduce a model of maternal care that we hope will reduce the high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity we see in New York and across the country.”

At the Mothers Center, patients with acute or chronic medical and surgical complications will meet with Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) experts as well as specialists from a variety of disciplines, such as cardiology, neurology, surgery and endocrinology. For example, a pregnant woman with heart disease will be seen by her MFM physician and her cardiologist during the same visit instead of traveling to separate offices. Patients will meet with anesthesia experts and will have the option of meeting with a psychologist because of the enormous stress involved for a mother and family dealing with an acute or chronic illness during pregnancy. Care coordinators will streamline and schedule appointments, and specialists from across the medical center will meet regularly with the MFM physicians at the Mothers Center, working as a team to develop customized treatment plans that meet each patient’s unique needs and maximize the safety of both mother and baby.

The Mothers Center is equipped to help women with a wide range of serious complications and risk factors, such as lung and heart transplants, hypertension, seizure disorders, and placenta accreta, a condition that increases the risk of premature birth and life-threatening blood loss after delivery. The highest proportion of the Mothers Center’s patients have cardiac conditions. Some women may need to see several specialists at the Mothers Center. Patients will have access to other health care experts throughout NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

“Increasingly, women who are considering pregnancy or are already pregnant have significant complexities that require seamless, multidisciplinary collaboration. The reasons for this include delayed childbearing, assisted reproductive technologies and effective management of conditions that in the past would have made pregnancy ill-advised or not possible,” said Dr. Leslie Moroz, director of the Mothers Center and assistant professor of maternal fetal medicine and critical care at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “The center is a phenomenal example of patient-centered care because it brings specialists to the patients while also enhancing their ability to collaborate in patient care. It is a space for providers to act as a team and be seen as a team by their patients.”

Additional services that enhance the quality of care include:

• Access to counseling, as well as nutrition and mental health resources.
• Consult rooms optimized for telemedicine so that virtual visits can be offered to patients for their two-week postpartum appointment.
• Integrated follow-up care and research after the baby is born to enable ongoing management of current medical conditions and to prevent future health risks that can arise in women who have complications during pregnancy, such as heart disease and stroke for mothers who experienced preeclampsia.

The Mothers Center comes at a time when the high rate of maternal deaths and “near misses” in the United States has drawn attention as a major public health concern. The rate of severe complications around childbirth has steadily increased in recent years and affects more than 50,000 women every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. An estimated half of all maternal deaths in the U.S. are preventable.

The Mothers Center is co-located and modeled after the Carmen and John Thain Center for Prenatal Pediatrics, an outpatient center that takes the same multidisciplinary approach to fetal complications. The Mothers Center, in turn, focuses on the mother’s health. Dr. D’Alton led the opening of both centers.

The gift from Carmen and John Thain to open the Mothers Center was made in memory of Carmen’s mother, Angeles Badell, MD, who was a leader in the study of rehabilitation medicine with a focus on pediatric rehabilitation. An expert in the treatment of spina bifida, a birth defect in which a developing baby’s spinal cord fails to form properly, Dr. Badell was incredibly dedicated to the well-being of mothers and their families.

The Mothers Center builds on an initiative launched in 2013 at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center that coordinates multidisciplinary care for women with high-risk pregnancies. The opening of the Mothers Center provides a physical space for seeing subspecialists on site and for in-person team collaboration and represents the Hospital’s ongoing commitment to providing exemplary care for women and children.

For more information on the Mothers Center, visit https://www.columbiadoctors.org/specialties/obstetrics-gynecology/our-centers/mothers-center.

NewYork-Presbyterian

NewYork-Presbyterian is one of the nation’s most comprehensive, integrated academic healthcare delivery systems, whose organizations are dedicated to providing the highest quality, most compassionate care and service to patients in the New York metropolitan area, nationally, and throughout the globe. In collaboration with two renowned medical schools, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, NewYork-Presbyterian is consistently recognized as a leader in medical education, groundbreaking research and innovative, patient-centered clinical care.

NewYork-Presbyterian has four major divisions:

• NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is ranked #1 in the New York metropolitan area by U.S. News and World Report and repeatedly named to the Honor Roll of “America’s Best Hospitals.”
• NewYork-Presbyterian Regional Hospital Network comprises hospitals and other facilities in the New York metropolitan region.
• NewYork-Presbyterian Physician Services, which connects medical experts with patients in their communities.
• NewYork-Presbyterian Community and Population Health, encompassing ambulatory care network sites and community healthcare initiatives, including NewYork Quality Care, the Accountable Care Organization jointly established by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia.

For more information, visit www.nyp.org and find us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Columbia University Irving Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Irving Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.