Concerns About ‘Structural Racism’ Prompt Major Hospital Network to Change Policies About Babies Born Addicted to Drugs
A major hospital network in Massachusetts has now revamped its policies regarding babies born addicted to drugs in an attempt to address “significant racial and ethnic inequities” it claims are associated with substance abuse disorder.
On Tuesday, Mass General Brigham, the commonwealth’s largest hospital group, announced that it will no longer automatically report that an infant has been born with drug addiction since the automatic reporting and other such policies “disproportionately affect Black individuals.”
Current commonwealth law demands mandatory reporting of all infants with “physical dependence upon an addictive drug at birth.” However, the hospitals affiliated with Mass General Brigham — including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Salem Hospital — will now encourage reporting such cases to child protective services only if the babies are “suffering or at imminent risk of suffering physical or emotional injury.”
Another policy change at Mass General Brigham means that medical professionals will now conduct toxicology tests on newborns and/or “pregnant people” — sometimes referred to as women — only under two conditions. First, hospital workers must be given written consent to perform the tests. Second, they will perform the tests only if the results will affect the medical treatment the mother and/or child receives. . .
“Our new perinatal testing and reporting policy is the latest step in our efforts to address longstanding inequities in substance use disorder care and to provide compassionate, evidence-based support to families, while addressing substance use disorder as a treatable health condition,” said Sarah Wakeman, M.D., senior medical director for Substance Use Disorder at Mass General Brigham. (Read more from “Concerns About ‘Structural Racism’ Prompt Major Hospital Network to Change Policies About Babies Born Addicted to Drugs” HERE)
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