News article

National Quality Forum Endorses Exclusive Breastfeeding Measure

December 2, 2008

(Washington, DC) The National Quality Forum recently endorsed 17 national consensus standards for quality metrics in perinatal care. Among the new standards is the measurement of “livebirths not discharged from the NICU who were fed by ‘breast only’ since birth.” NQF is a non-profit public-private partnership.

According to NQF, “Consensus standards improve quality of care by standardizing measurement in care settings and encouraging accountability and public reporting. NQF was guided in its endorsement of these perinatal care measures by nearly 300 comments from NQF members and the public.”

The breastfeeding measurement comes out of work of the California Maternal Quality Care Initiative. The NQF standard comes on the heels of the publicization of exclusive breastfeeding rates in each hospital in California. California has routinely collected information on exclusive breastfeeding at the time of the genetic screen, and rates in each hospital were publicly available, but this information was recently the subject of a media attention.

By focusing only on those infants who are breastfeeding, hospital EBF rates provide a measure of a hospital’s overall breastfeeding support. For example, in California, some of the highest ranking hospitals had EBF rates of over 90%, while in the lowest ranking hospitals, 99% of breastfeeding infants were given formula, well more than would be medically necessary.

In order for the NQF standard to be implemented, states will have to come up with reliable ways to measure breastfeeding exclusivity in the hospital. A standardized way to collect the information at the time of the genetic screen, or on the birth certificate, are the two most promising options.

For more information, see the NQF press release.