Skagit Valley Hospital (SVH) is committed to its mission to deliver exceptional care, always—specifically in the way it approaches communication and transparency with patients in their Family Birth Center—and has recently adopted the TeamBirth best practices program.

According to a news release from WSHA, TeamBirth is a program focused on best practices for patient-centered healthcare decisions made during labor, delivery and postpartum with the goal of transparency and shared decision making through the birthing process.

“The benefit is increased patient satisfaction, working as a team to provide a safe and healthy delivery for the birthing parent and baby,” said Tami Schnell, MHA, BSN, RNC-OB, Regional Director for Women’s & Children’s Services at Skagit Regional Health.

The SVH Family Birth Center has completed efforts to join WSHA’s fourth cohort to adopt the TeamBirth initiative. This involved meetings with WSHA, reporting through the Family Birth Center Council, education for providers and staff and working with WSHA to acquire new patient-facing whiteboards.

“The goal is to make decisions as a team, including the patient, families and support people,” said Schnell.

Decision-making occurs during team huddles, which can happen in a variety of situations—when the patient is admitted, if the patient or child’s condition changes, if decisions need to be made about the delivery and if the patient or a team member requests one.

WSHA states that TeamBirth has improved patient experience. Introduced in Washington in 2023, the program was created by Ariadne Labs, a center focused on improving health care systems, partnering with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. So far, a total of 38 hospitals in Washington and Oregon have participated in the program and WSHA hopes to have all birthing hospitals in Washington adopt TeamBirth by the end of 2025.

PHOTOS:
Top right: FBC leaders with a representative from TeamBirth stand beside the newly implemented whiteboards.
Middle left: The newly implemented whiteboard design. 
Bottom right: Brian Ivie, Skagit Regional Health CEO, and several other employees attended the TeamBirth kickoff event at the SVH Family Birth Center, to celebrate the hard work of the FBC team in implementing this initiative.