Telehealth and postpartum care
Your maternal telehealth program can still play an important role in the care and health of your patients even after they give birth.
What are barriers to postpartum care?
Barriers to postpartum care could include:
- The cost associated with travel, parking, or the cost of gas
- Long driving distances between home and your provider’s office
- Not being able to drive for a period after childbirth per your provider’s instructions
- Lack of childcare for the new baby or older siblings
Postpartum telehealth services
In-person appointments will be necessary in some postpartum cases. But there are still many ways to care for postpartum patients with telehealth. A list of potential services includes general health check-in to see how the patient is doing after childbirth, lactation support, screening and treatment for postpartum depression, therapy appointments with telehealth, referral to specialists, including programs for substance use, and birth control counseling and prescriptions.
More information:
Maternal Telehealth Access Project — from the Maternal Health Learning & Innovation Center
Tele-Maternal Health — from the Rural Health Information Hub
Spotlight
Centerstone
Centerstone provides mental health and substance use disorder treatment in south central Tennessee to reduce both infant mortality and racial disparities in prenatal care. Implementing telehealth at the start of the public health pandemic has allowed Centerstone to reach more people through technology.
Staff members and providers no longer spend time traveling across a large geographic area for appointments, which allows more visits every day. People miss fewer visits and attend more education programs virtually than in person. Centerstone, which is funded by HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau - Healthy Start grantee program, notes that educating their staff and sharing lessons learned on how to provide telehealth visits is a large part of their success. They urge everyone implementing telehealth programs to “be patient and have grace.”
Learn more about Centerstone's telehealth program for prenatal care.