Hospitals should implement best practices to manage high-risk pregnant women. This includes women with the most common preventable pregnancy complications identified by the CDC — postpartum hemorrhage, severe hypertension, and venous thromboembolism.

1. Hospitals should have a protocol to ensure that severe hypertension is treated within 60 minutes.
2. Hospitals need to hold multidisciplinary staff meetings — or huddles — to review each obstetrical patients risk factors, including hemorrhage risk levels.
3. Hospitals need to conduct obstetric emergency simulations in their labor and delivery units. This training is similar to the training pilots receive to be prepared for rare events.
4. Lower- and higher-resource hospitals need to formalize relationshipsto allow for transfer of high-risk patients and/or immediate consultation in an unexpected emergency.