ACOG recently shared updated guidelines on tailored prenatal care delivery, focused on ensuring safe, effective, and patient-first care in an ever-changing post-COVID world. These guidelines are focused on:

• Addressing unmet social needs and tailoring care to each individual’s background.
• Frequency of prenatal visits and monitoring.
• Utilizing telemedicine and other modalities to provide care.

Though these guidelines may be new, Delfina is already helping providers meet these standards in numerous ways:  

• Tailored Approach: 
  
  • Delfina's connected care model prioritizes the primary prenatal care provider’s tailored care plan, supplementing it with options to further customize each patient’s care plan including patient-driven lifestyle interventions, community-based virtual doula care, OBGYN-approved educational materials, virtual classes on lactation and nutrition, and easy referrals to specialists like nutritionists and behavioral health providers. 
• Frequency of Care: 
  
  • Delfina gives providers and patients more control and agency over each pregnancy journey. Both providers and patients can closely monitor symptoms outside of routine appointments, easily communicate at any time of the day, and access virtual care programs remotely. Delfina offers ongoing, proactive intervention and care to reduce the prevalence of high-cost complications and treatment. 
• Modalities of Care: 
  
  • Delfina’s digital provider dashboard puts everything providers need to know about their patients in one place, with AI-powered predictive models that supply providers with actionable patient insights to help them make proactive, informed decisions about their patients' care. 
  • Delfina’s member engagement app empowers patients with information about their health, pregnancy, and postpartum journey. It encourages them to track their health and symptoms daily to power our predictive models and supply providers and their care team with actionable patient insights to improve care.

If you’re interested in learning more about Delfina and the impact it can have on your practice, please contact Delfina Care’s Chief Medical Officer, Bonnie Zell, MD, MPH, FACOG: (415) 794-0203 / bonnie@delfina.com. 

See below for an overview of the panel’s recommendations to ensure your team can easily comprehend and implement the updated guidelines with your patients: 

Tailoring Care Options: 

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals should conduct a comprehensive prenatal needs assessment, including medical, social, and structural drivers of health. 
  
  • Reasoning: Many medical, social, and structural factors are correlated with perinatal health. An early risk assessment for all patients in pregnancy can facilitate opportunities to mitigate the adverse effects of these risk factors and to share important information and anticipatory guidance.

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals should engage pregnant individuals in developing their care plans using shared decision-making.
  
  • Reasoning: Pregnancy and birth are major life events. Individuals' preferences for prenatal care delivery may be shaped by their prior health care experiences, cultural norms, and social drivers of health, such as employment, transportation, and caregiving responsibilities.

Social Needs: 

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals should refer or coordinate assistance through the health system and community for individuals with unmet social needs.
  
  • Reasoning: Social and structural drivers of health (eg, social isolation and food, housing, and transportation insecurity) greatly affect health outcomes, especially in the perinatal period.

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals may adjust prenatal care delivery to be more accessible for pregnant individuals, especially for those with unmet needs.
  
  • Reasoning: Care adjustments are modifications to care delivery to improve accessibility. Adjustment may be used to temporarily meet needs (eg, a patient with transportation barriers awaiting ride vouchers), address ongoing social needs (eg, an hourly employee cannot afford to forgo wages), or provide adjustment in light of patient preferences for care delivery.

Frequency of Care: 

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals may tailor the visit frequency and monitoring schedule as determined by the medical and social needs of the pregnant individual.
  
  • Reasoning: Prenatal care traditionally has been delivered using a visit schedule of 12–14 in-person visits, regardless of individual risk factors. Tailored visit schedules that adjust the number and frequency of prenatal visits based on risk and parity have been supported by several organizations and peer nations for more than two decades.

Modalities: 

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals may offer telemedicine or other visit modalities as long as they support the completion of guideline-based recommended services.
  
  • Reasoning: Many alternative approaches to prenatal care delivery have emerged in recent decades, including telemedicine (eg, video or audio-only) and group prenatal care. Telemedicine is effective for medical care when in-person services (e.g., physical examinations, laboratory tests, imaging, vaccinations) are not needed or can be completed through alternative means.

• Guideline: OB-GYNs and other maternity care professionals may individualize monitoring options for most routine parameters during pregnancy.
  
  • Reasoning: Monitoring of routine parameters in pregnancy is increasingly available outside of clinical settings, such as at local pharmacies, through home-visiting programs, or by remote self-monitoring. Evidence demonstrates the feasibility, acceptability, and accuracy of self-monitoring of blood pressure and weight.

‍American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Tailored Prenatal Care Delivery for Pregnant Individuals.” ACOG, April 2025.