Designing family-centered hospital care

ASHOKA FELLOW, ARGENTINA

Neonatologist Miguel Larguía has created a family-centered maternity ward model for Argentina’s public hospitals. Argentinean public hospitals that traditionally cater to the poor are set up for volume, rather than service, in maternity wards; inevitably, both efficiency and quality of care suffer. By retraining doctors, and improving the auxiliary roles of nurses, Miguel provides a range of on-site psychological and social services to families. SARDA increases the health of newborns and offers a variety of specialty services to improve the results and experience of maternity hospitals for the entire family. Public hospitals begin to respond to the mothers’ and infants’ actual needs, rather than as patients to be institutionally processed. Miguel is replicating his innovation across Latin America; he drives this spread as the chair of the Neonatological Foundation.

Speech Topics

• Healthcare in low-income areas
• Spreading innovation