Montevideo, 18/03/2019‒ In 2018, Pereira Rossell’s Women’s Hospital in Montevideo did not record any maternal deaths. Collected data also reveal a decrease in number of premature births and adolescent pregnancy and low percentage of caesarean sections according to the national average. All this information has been collected through the Perinatal Information System (SIP), the perinatal clinical record with capacity of analysis and monitoring the implementation of public policies developed by the Latin American Center of Perinatology (CLAP) of PAHO. Nowadays, SIP is a strong tool to collect data and analysis that allows countries to obtain highly reliable indicators.
45% of the Uruguayan population is born in maternities managed by the State Health Services Administration (ASSE, acronym from Spanish), and a third of them are born in the Pereira Rossell Hospital. It is in this scenario that for more than 25 years the SIP has been registering the patients admitted in the health center: “At first, they were more elementary records, but over the years it was perfected”, explains Dr. Elvira Fernandez, deputy director of this hospital.
According to Anna Pintos, Head of Medical Records at the Pereira Rossell Women’s Hospital, the use of SIP in the management of health services “in a nationally referenced hospital like this one, it is a fundamental tool for monitoring and following the lines of action implemented in maternal-prenatal health and, therefore, for decision making".
In the same way, Pintos expands on the type of indicators that are derived from the SIP: "The main one involves the number of births, but also the basic indicators of quality of care such as the number of antenatal check-ups, the number of caesarean sections, birth weight and gestational age, among other data. It is also a tool for tracking high-risk patients. This clinical history records the continuum of care from prenatal check-ups, including indicated treatment, through subsequent follow-ups at the first level of care until delivery, birth and monitoring of the newborn.
SIP is used in 22 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, adapting to their needs and their prioritized indicators.
