Because every woman deserves specialized care

St. James Healthcare will be participating in a new program aimed at ensuring moms and babies in Granite and Powell counties are healthy from preconception, to pregnancy, delivery and beyond. The program, Maternal Health Connection, will begin providing women with high quality prenatal care and careful management of conditions beginning September 2023. 

The program is funded by a grant from the Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program, otherwise known as RMOMS, awarded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. Intermountain Health was one of four recipients nationwide in 2022 to receive an RMOMS award. The grant provides nearly $1 million per year over four years for a total of $3.9 million to help increase access to obstetric services and improve outcomes such as preterm labor, low birthweight, infant mortality and more in southwestern Montana. 

“Pregnancy can be a difficult time in a woman's life, and current economic and geographic challenges do not make it any simpler," explains Dr. Ibrahim Hammad, MD, Maternal and Fetal Medicine, Intermountain Health. "It is part of our responsibility as healthcare professionals not only to provide counseling and treatment in clinics and hospitals, but also to reach out to our patients in an effort to ease and reduce their burden. This program is designed to bring maternal care closer to, if not to, the household.”

In communities such as Philipsburg, Deer Lodge, and Drummond, an expecting mom might need to travel 30 miles to see a primary care provider and more than 60 miles to see a specialist. This travel, when possible, often means time away from work and family as well as lost income. As a result of these barriers, many women choose to go without adequate prenatal or postpartum care.

“Our mission is to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes in rural Montana. We know these families have no choice but to travel to Butte, Anaconda, and Missoula to receive care,” said Krystal Richards, RMOMS Grant Project Director for Intermountain Health. “I’m excited to bring choice to these families and ultimately develop a financially viable model that can be replicated in any maternal health desert.”

The grant specifically hopes to:

• Increase the number of women engaged in preconception through postpartum care
• Improve health outcomes for women of childbearing age as they access services and have access to specialty care via telehealth
• Improve early identification of high-risk pregnancies and the development of appropriate care plans
• Increase the rate of pregnant women with birth plans
• Decrease the local rate of maternal morbidity and mortality
• Improve the viability of local healthcare, including obstetric services
• Grow the obstetric support workforce

Maternal Health Connection will offer a hybrid of telehealth services with access to maternal-fetal specialists and OB-GYNs and in-person patient care delivered by certified nurse midwives (CNMs) and registered nurses in their communities and directly to them in their homes.

A community health nurse has been hired, and two CNMs from Intermountain Health are in place to begin providing services in September. The program plans to expand over the next three years to include two birth doulas, sonographers, genetic counseling, and lactation consultants.

St. James Healthcare is one of nine participating partners in Maternal Health Connection. Intermountain Health, which applied for the grant prior to the merger with SCL Health, will also be working closely with Granite County Medical Center and its two rural health clinics, Deer Lodge Medical Center and its rural health clinic, Southwest Montana Community Health Center, Healthy Granite County Network, Healthy Mothers, Healthy  Babies, the Montana Medicaid Office, and Healthy Montana Families.