Maternity Practices Score in Washington

Washington

Although most hospital administrators and staff agree that breastfeeding provides optimal nutrition for most infants, many hospitals and clinics fail to implement practices that support breastfeeding.

In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the assistance of an expert panel, established an ongoing national survey system to monitor and evaluate hospital practices related to breastfeeding among all facilities that routinely provide maternity care in the United States. First administered in 2007, the Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC) survey measures the quality of hospital maternity practices to support breastfeeding. 

Surveyed birthing hospitals and facilities are evaluated in a number of areas, and receive both subscores and an overall mPINC score. These scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores representing better maternity care practices. Each state also receives its own mPINC score and report with the proportion of hospital facilities within the state that reported the ideal responses to each question on the survey. 

The survey monitors aspects of maternal breastfeeding and newborn care such as:

• Immediate postpartum care.
• Rooming-in.
• Feeding practices.
• Feeding education and support.
• Discharge support.
• Institutional management.

To improve an mPINC score, a hospital should seek to improve its practices in the seven dimensions of care: caring, compassion, spirituality, community outreach, providing comfort, crisis intervention and going the extra mile. Improvement in any of those dimensions will likely increase the overall mPINC score, and each dimension of care has several areas of potential improvement. 

Since the establishment of the mPINC survey, researchers have observed nationwide improvements in many of the maternity care policies and practices measured, though such changes cannot be directly attributed to the survey itself. The mPINC survey has brought hospitals and birth facilities together to improve their standard of care.

Healthy People 2030 has two objectives related to breastfeeding: 

• Increasing the proportion of infants who are exclusively breastfed through 6 months of age.
• Increasing the proportion of infants who are breastfed at 1 year.

Edwards, Roger A., and Barbara L. Philipp. “Using Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (MPINC) Survey Results as a Catalyst for Change.” Journal of Human Lactation 26, no. 4 (November 2010): 399–404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0890334410371212.

Hudacek, Sharon S. “Dimensions of Caring: A Qualitative Analysis of Nurses’ Stories.” Journal of Nursing Education 47, no. 3 (March 2008): 124–29. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20080301-04.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General, 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52682/.