By Gina Jordan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-883064.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – Pregnant women who live in rural counties in North Florida will benefit from a grant awarded to Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare Foundation. The money will be used to hopefully provide better outcomes for moms and babies.
The grant, worth just over $75-thousand, is from The Blue Foundation for a Healthy Florida. TMH got one of eleven grants awarded out of nearly a hundred applicants. Senior Manager Jared Skok says, "They told a story so compelling, not just about the need in the six counties in North Central Florida here, but also about what they're doing, the quality and compassion of their staff to address this need."
The funds will help women in rural areas like Gadsden, Jefferson, Madison, Taylor and Wakulla counties receive prenatal care in their communities. Monisha Hall is a new mom who had plenty of access to doctors from the start, but her daughter's birth at TMH came with some complications.
"It was long. It was long. I came in Thursday, I leave Tuesday morning. Since she was going to be so big, they required that I get a C-section. I didn't want one, but I just went ahead and got one anyway. She came out to be 9 lbs, 2oz."
Dr. Lisa Jernigan is a physician with the Family Medicine Residency Improved Pregnancy Outcomes Clinic, which operates out of each county's health department. Dr. Jernigan supervises and provides care, and now she can tackle some of their biggest needs, like hiring more providers and buying a key piece of equipment.
"The portable ultrasound machine, of course, will save women some trips back to town for things that can be figured out on site with the machine. It improves their satisfaction with their care, which we hope will bring them into care more frequently."
Jernigan says the cost of transportation is a huge problem for some patients who live as far as seventy miles away and need to get to Tallahassee for small tests.
"In some of my counties, I start talking to women at twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy out of forty about how they're going to get to the hospital when they go into labor, and gas money, find transportation, that sort of thing. So any time you can save them the trip, that saves them valuable resources."
The U-S Department of Health and Human Services says babies born to mothers who receive no prenatal care are five times more likely to die.