Establishment of an Early Pregnancy Care Clinic

Abstract

Early pregnancy loss can have a profound impact on the lives of women and their families, but the experience is often underacknowledged, with the diverse and complex needs of these women not always being met. Health care providers are in a unique position to provide support, helping each woman navigate through what is often a significant event in her lifetime.

In response to these gaps, a large academic medical center in the upper Midwest established the Early Pregnancy Care (EPC) Clinic in 2019 as a subclinic of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The goal of the EPC Clinic is to standardize the management of early pregnancy loss and related concerns to ensure each woman receives timely, holistic, and patient-centered care that fully encompasses the physical and emotional needs of the patient and her family.

The EPC Clinic is run by a small, dedicated team of certified nurse-midwives and registered nurses in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team, providing comprehensive care to women with a confirmed early pregnancy loss, first trimester bleeding, pregnancy of unknown location, inconclusive viability, or a history of a prior early pregnancy loss, including ectopic and molar pregnancies. Team members coordinate timely visits and evaluation, offer comprehensive management options, and provide bereavement care and resources. Follow-up care is arranged to monitor each woman's physical and emotional recovery following a loss, including check-ins with consistent members of the team to maintain continuity of care.

Anecdotal evidence as well as Press-Ganey surveys obtained from patients and their families have demonstrated the exceptional value of the EPC Clinic. In this article, we outline our EPC Clinic's components and processes and discuss strategies that may benefit other health care systems aspiring to develop similar programs to improve early pregnancy loss care and the patient experience.