The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) added a new designation to identify which hospitals are “Birthing-Friendly”—a label it will begin adding to qualifying hospitals in fall 2023.

The designation aims to reduce maternal mortality and complications in the US; maternal mortality rose by 25% in 2020, and Black women die at nearly three times the rates of white women, according to a CDC report from February. The US ranked last in maternal mortality that year compared to 10 other high-income countries, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

To earn the designation, CMS said, hospitals must participate in a statewide or national collaborative program where medical teams and public health leaders work together to improve care quality for birthing parents and babies. Hospitals that opt in qualify for an operating payment rate increase of 4.3%, a much-needed boost for hospitals struggling with profitability in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation.

But there’s no single set of metrics that hospitals will be required to follow to earn CMS’s new designation, and any changes they make may depend on what areas need improvement. For example, hospitals could focus on reducing pregnancy complications and early births, which happen before 39 weeks, according to the CDC.

CMS’s designation—at least in its initial form—isn’t tied to outcomes. However, medical professionals said there are a variety of measures and outcomes that have been shown to make a hospital truly birthing-friendly.

When it comes to measuring maternal-care quality, one metric comes up over and over again: a hospital’s C-section rate, said Holly Loudon, chair of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive science at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside in New York City. Keep reading here.—MS

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Most people don’t look forward to doctor visits, especially when it can involve being poked with needles or having to stay still in a giant metal tube for an MRI. As a pediatrician, Evelyn Chan saw children struggle with fear and anxiety during routine procedures, so she used virtual reality (VR) to solve the problem. Enter: Smileyscope.

The Smileyscope device, which looks like a View-Master (’90s kids will know), is strapped onto a patient’s head and leads them through various VR simulations—such as an underwater adventure introduced by a penguin—during common procedures like shots, infusions, and MRIs. Chan, the CEO of Smileyscope, sat down for an interview with Healthcare Brew.

What feedback have you heard from hospitals? What we find is that clinicians say that their workflow is improved. In this time, when there’s sort of a lot of staffing issues, they’re not having to pull in additional staff to help calm down a patient or hold them down if we need to or stabilize them. We found that…they’ve been able to free up staff.

What kinds of cost savings come from Smileyscope? If you can more efficiently use the MRI scanner, you can fit in an additional patient, for example. And also bedtime, because usually if you need an anesthetic, then the patient needs to be admitted for, let’s say, four to six hours. If you’re [conducting] an awake scan, they need a patient bed for probably about half that time.

Do you want Smileyscope to get acquired by a bigger digital health player or do the acquiring? We want to be the biggest and best company that we can be and deliver the most impact for our patients. So, I think that would be the latter, becoming a large player and acquiring and expanding. Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @MaiaLura on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

Hearing aids walk a fine line: They must amplify sound, but in a way that doesn’t further damage a person’s hearing. It’s not an exact science, either, as the FDA’s recent change on output limits for over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids shows.

The FDA initially proposed last fall setting the decibel limit at 115 decibels, or 120 dBs for devices equipped to compress the loudest sounds.

That’s “like a jackhammer right next to your ear,” said Lindsay Creed, associate director of audiology practices at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).

After some pushback—including from ASHA—the FDA revised its final rule in August that created a category for OTC hearing aids to put the output max at about 111 dBs, or 117 dBs for hearing aids with compression.

“It’s a 50% reduction in sound,” Creed said. “That’s a big reduction.”

Although sounds in the natural world can reach up to 120 dBs (and louder), Creed argued that hearing-aid users might not be able to remove the devices quickly enough or move away from the loud sound to protect their hearing. The FDA ultimately agreed the potential exposure to loud noise was outside of acceptable safety limits and, as ASHA also requested, required all OTC hearing devices to have a volume control users could adjust.—MS

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Flawed oxygen devices could have contributed to Covid-19 deaths among patients of color “several fold.” (the New York Times)

Quote: “With decades-high inflation affecting Americans everywhere, prices of certain essentials have swelled beyond some prisoners’ ability to pay.”—Patrick Irving, an incarcerated writer, on prisoners being “held hostage to price hikes” (the New York Times)

Read: Women appear to experience long-Covid symptoms more frequently than men; these five are helping researchers understand the disease. (Bloomberg)

Catch up on the top Healthcare Brew stories you may have missed:

• Doctors who spread disinfo could be punished or protected, depending on the state
• Why telehealth is here to stay
• Companies designing drugs with AI could shave years, millions off development