In medicine, we don't simply accept a poor outcome and move on. When a patient dies unexpectedly or experiences a serious complication, physicians, nurses and other members of the care team take a hard look at what happened. We review medical records, examine time lines, ask difficult questions, and look for missed opportunities to improve care.

The purpose isn't to assign blame. It's to understand whether something could have been done differently so another patient doesn't experience a similar outcome.

That same commitment to learning and saving lives is the reason Arkansas invested in its Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC). Created in 2019 by Act 829 of the Arkansas General Assembly and led by Dr. William Greenfield, the committee meets each quarter to review pregnancy-associated deaths from across the state. Physicians, nurses, public health leaders, behavioral health professionals, first responders, state agencies, the State Crime Laboratory and many others each bring a different perspective. Together, they review each death to better understand the facts and circumstances that contributed to each.

The MMRC's reports consistently show that nearly 90 percent of pregnancy-associated deaths in Arkansas were preventable. That difficult statistic tells us that if we are willing to investigate why they happen, we have an opportunity to prevent more of them.

Sometimes the........

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