Rapid Response Obstetrics team at Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, enabling factors

BackgroundThere are barriers and enablers for the implementation of rapid response teams in obstetric hospitals. The enabling factors were determined at Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS).Materials and methodsAn observational, retrospective study was conducted by analysing the emergency obstetric reports sent by mobile technology and e-mail to the Medical Care Unit of the IMSS in 2013. Frequency and mean was obtained using the Excel 2010 program for descriptive statistics.ResultsA total of 164,250 emergency obstetric cases were reported, and there was a mean of 425 messages per day, of which 32.2% were true obstetric emergencies and required the rapid response team. By e-mail, there were 73,452 life threatening cases (a mean of 6 cases per day). A monthly simulation was performed in hospitals (480 in total).Enabling factors were message's synchronisation among the participating personnel, the accurate record of the obstetrics, as well as the simulations performed by the operational staff.The most common emergency was preeclampsia–eclampsia with 3351 reports, followed by obstetric haemorrhage with 2982 cases.DiscussionThe enabling factors for the implementation of a rapid response team at IMSS were properly timed communication between the central delegation teams, as they allowed faster medical and administrative management and participation of hospital medical teams in the process.ConclusionMobile technology has increased the speed of medical and administrative management in emergency obstetric care. However, comparative studies are needed to determine the statistical significance