Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola, Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast, and Ascension St. Vincent’s Clay County have been named in Newsweek’s list of America’s Best Maternity Care Hospitals at the highest five ribbon level. Although 400 hospitals in the U.S. were recognized in this year’s rankings, these Ascension Florida hospitals are the only ones in their areas to make this distinguished list.
The Best Maternity Care distinction recognizes facilities that have provided exceptional care to mothers, newborns, and their families based on three data sources. These include nationwide online surveys of hospital managers and maternity healthcare professionals, medical key performance indicators relevant to maternity care and patient satisfaction data.
“These awards are a testament to our physicians and associates strong commitment to the mothers, babies, and families we serve,” said Dr. Syed Jafri, Chief Clinical Officer for Ascension Florida. “In addition to providing high-quality care while in our hospitals, our care teams actively participate in health initiatives to address maternal health outcomes that contribute to their health and well-being after they are discharged.”
The Family Birth Place at St. Vincent’s Clay County offers The Seton Center on-campus. The Seton Center serves new mothers and their families in our community throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and the baby’s first year. Services offered by the Center include prenatal and childbirth education classes, lactation consultants, books, educational materials, telephone consultations with experienced registered nurses, free postpartum assessments, infant health screening, breast pump rentals, and instruction on newborn care and breastfeeding.
Sacred Heart Pensacola currently utilizes multiple approaches to improve healthcare insecurity for mothers and infants. The Women's Care Center team is addressing key obstacles to care such as transportation, insurance, financial resources, and child care. Maternal health navigators who identify maternal patients finding difficulty in these barrier areas have several available to alleviate them including coordinating with rideshare services to help patients get to their appointments, providing pack-n-plays for safe sleeping habits, and offering iron-rich food and education bags.
Sacred Heart’s facilities in Pensacola and Miramar Beach are participating in the state’s first postpartum wristband initiative. The new program involves giving a silver rubber wristband to mothers to voluntarily wear for up to a year after their baby is born. This has helped prioritize them as patients and spotlight their medical history when they seek care through EMS, ERs, or other medical sites.
Two of the hospitals, Studer Family Children’s Hospital at Ascension Sacred Heart and Sacred Heart Emerald Coast, provide a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Sacred Heart and St. Vincent’s Clay County are Gold Safe Sleep Certified in recognition of their commitment to infant safe sleep. All three hospitals hold the Baby-Friendly designation in recognition of their commitment to the highest level of breastfeeding support. St. Vincent’s and Sacred Heart health systems were also recently named as top 15 health systems in the country for 2024 by Fortune and PINC AI.
To learn more about maternity care Ascension Sacred Heart visit SacredHeartBaby.com. For more information about St. Vincent’s maternity care visit JaxHealthBaby.com.
The full list of recipients is available online.
