June Team-Based Care Meeting Addresses Equitable Access to Contraceptive Care

Thank you to Upstream USA, Wood River, and Providence Community Health Centers for an informative June Team-Based Care meeting addressing equitable access to contraceptive care. Two representatives from Upstream, Melanie Priestly, Practice Transformation Director, and Seville Meli, VP of Practice Transformation, outlined their organization’s innovative program and their early work with RI primary care practices. According to Upstream, around 40% of pregnancies in RI are unplanned. Upstream works with primary care practices to increase access to contraception by providing technical assistance in the form of provider and staff training, patient-centered educational materials, and improvements to coding and billing and EHR systems.

We also heard from representatives at two practices currently partnering with Upstream: Jessica Joseph, Director of Clinical Operations at Wood River Health and Stephanie Avila, CNM FNP OB/GYN, Title X Program Manager at Providence Community Health Center. These practices have been working with Upstream over the past year and spoke to their achievements in that time with staff training, EHR updates, including pregnancy intent screening questions, and improved clinical workflows. Link to PPT here and recording here.