HOUSTON – Doctors are getting creative when it comes to checking up on pregnant women.
Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women set up a new way for patients to see their doctors and it’s catching on.
“It’s important to think a little bit outside of the usual options,” said Dr. Mark Turrentine, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital. “This provides another tool for us to provide good healthcare for our patients.”
To help patients avoid germs, doctors created the drive-thru appointment option where moms and babies are monitored.
“Such as getting blood pressure, hearing the baby’s heartbeat, more one on one contact and at the same time not to have the patient come into the facility,” Dr. Turrentine said.
Drive-thru prenatal visits include key elements that cannot be performed via telehealth visits, such as blood pressure measurements for evaluation for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, fetal heart rate assessment, and selected ultrasound-based measurements or observations.
Helping moms feel safer
Doctors have seen this method in reducing patient anxiety resulting from the reduction in the number of planned clinic visits with an obstetric health care professional as well as fear of virus exposure in the clinic setting.
During pregnancy, women have routine check-ups and visits are more frequent as the due date approaches.
“Every two weeks in the third trimester and it eventually drops down to weekly,” Dr. Turrentine explains. “Most patients do want to be seen, they like the drive-thru options quite a bit.”
Texas Children’s Obstetrician and Gynecologist-in-Chief Dr. Michael A. Belfort recently published a paper about the drive-thru prenatal clinic in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Belfort said the drive-through model is projected to reduce the number of in-person clinic visits by 33% per patient compared with the traditional prenatal care schedules.
Houston was first and now other hospitals are starting this method of seeing pregnant patients.