UAMS ANGELS Prenatal Program Receives National Innovation Award
SEPT. 2, 2004 | ANGELS, a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) program to improve regional prenatal care for high-risk pregnancies, has attracted national attention for its innovation.
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 SEPT. 2, 2004 | ANGELS, a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) program to improve regional prenatal care for high-risk pregnancies, has attracted national attention for its innovation. The program, a partnership between UAMS, the state Department of Human Services and the Arkansas Medical Society, is unique in its approach to decreasing the number of babies born with severe medical problems and saving the state money at the same time. For this it has been named a national winner in the 2004 Innovations Awards Program of The Council of State Governments (CSG). The award was presented Aug. 18 to Curtis Lowery, M.D., a professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and Tina Benton, R.N., project director, on the final day of the Southern Legislative Conference meeting at the Peabody Little Rock. Dan Sprague, CSG executive director, announced the award, along with state Sen. Shane Broadway of Benton, chairman of the Southern Legislative Conference of the CSG, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that seeks to foster excellence in state government. Lowery said other states work with disease management companies to contain Medicaid costs, but ANGELS is the only program in the nation that uses university physicians working directly with the Medicaid program to reduce costs associated with babies born with severe medical problems. Costs are reduced when high-risk patients can be referred to UAMS before delivery, and that’s what the program is designed to do. “ANGELS has intelligent, informed, experienced nurses to make the connections and get the patient in the system,” Lowery said. “If the patient isn’t referred until after the baby is born, the likelihood of complications, and therefore costs, go up. Benton said when physicians or even patients themselves call the ANGELS office, “we can connect the dots for them and arrange it so they don’t call 15 places.” ANGELS, the Antenatal and Neonatal Guidelines, Education and Learning System, was one of two programs chosen for recognition among 90 applicants in the Southern Legislative Conference’s 16-state region and is one of eight national winners. The Arkansas program is an innovative consultative service to family practitioners and obstetricians in Arkansas for high-risk pregnancies. ANGELS provides a 24-hour hotline, a referral system for patients and case management that includes maternal-fetal medicine consults, detailed fetal ultrasounds and genetic counseling that can be performed at UAMS or at remote sites through telemedicine. Lowery said the program allows UAMS to lend its expertise in high-risk pregnancies, which often result in low birthweight deliveries, to physicians throughout the state. “Only 50 percent to 60 percent of low birthweight babies in the state are delivered at UAMS,” Lowery said. “This national recognition couldn’t come at a better time to reinforce how much programs of this type are needed in Arkansas and in other states.” CSG established the Innovations Awards Program in 1986 to highlight exemplary state programs and practices and to facilitate transfer of those successful experiences to other states. The program is the only comprehensive, national awards program that focuses exclusively on state programs and policies and selects winners based on evaluations by state government leaders. The winning programs will be recognized in a ceremony during CSG's Annual Meeting and State Leadership Forum in June in Lake Tahoe, Nev. In addition, the winners are showcased in CSG publications like State Government News and on CSG's web site.
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