DHS opens Maternal Life360 HOME in Jonesboro
The Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) announced that St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro will open the first Maternal Life360 HOME in Arkansas this month and will begin providing services to women with high-risk pregnancies.
Life360 HOMEs are an innovative program that support women with high-risk pregnancies through home-visiting services during pregnancy and for up to two years after birth. The services available through this program are aimed at improving health outcomes and health-related social needs like food security and housing, and as a result, the long-term health and well-being of women and babies.
The program is an updated and extended version of the state’s Medicaid expansion program, formerly known as Arkansas Works and the private option.
“Opening the first Life360 Maternal HOME in Arkansas marks an important milestone, and it builds on our statewide focus on improving the availability and quality of care for pregnant women and babies across our state,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Putnam. “We’re grateful to St. Bernards for leading the way, and appreciate our many other partners around the state who are working to implement this program so more women can benefit from these services.”
The St. Bernards Maternal Life360 HOME will serve women who are enrolled in Medicaid benefits in Craighead County. A second Life360 HOME at White River Medical Center in Batesville is expected to open in the near future, and will serve women in Independence County, and additional Maternal Life360s are expected to follow in other hospitals around Arkansas.
“St. Bernards has a mission ‘to provide Christ-like healing to the community,’ and we cannot have healthy communities without healthy moms and babies,” said Emily McGee, St. Bernards Vice President of Nursing and Women’s & Children’s Services. “For far too long, our state has struggled with challenging maternal health outcomes, especially in eastern Arkansas. Through our pregnancy clinics and free healthcare services and education, we are improving outcomes throughout our service area. Still, we recognize a need to provide ongoing services that go beyond prenatal care. By partnering with Parents as Teachers, the Maternal Life360 Program helps us provide care for up to years postpartum, helping women adjust to motherhood and children get healthy starts. We appreciate Governor Sanders and the DHS team for their leadership planning and action to help families.”
A woman is eligible for Maternal Life360 home-visiting services if she is enrolled in Arkansas Medicaid, has a diagnosis of high-risk pregnancy, lives in a Life360 service area, and is not currently receiving other state or federally funded home-visiting services.
To measure the impact and outcomes of participants in the Maternal Life360 HOME program, DHS plans to monitor hospitals based on several metrics, including the number of home visits performed, linkages to non-medical services needed, hospital admissions and readmissions, non-emergent ER visits, prenatal visits, elective C-section rates, pre-term/term births, birthweight, NICU stays, and the provision of postpartum contraceptive care.
The opening of the first Life360 HOMEs comes on the heels of recommendations made to Sanders by the Strategic Committee on Maternal Health, which brought together dozens of partners and stakeholders to suggest ways maternal health in Arkansas could be improved to deliver better health outcomes for pregnant women and babies.