Remote Blood Pressure Monitoring Improves Outcomes for New Mothers

November 10, 2025

Remote Blood Pressure Monitoring Improves Outcomes for New Mothers

This year, HAP released an action plan for Pennsylvania hospitals and policymakers to improve maternal health quality, equity, and access. Following our inaugural Maternal Health Summit, we’re spotlighting promising practices and innovations that Pennsylvania hospitals have implemented to improve care for moms and babies.

Ensuring the safety of new mothers and the healthy outcome of their pregnancies doesn’t stop at the hospital doorstep. One of the biggest post-delivery complications for mothers is hypertension. To address this potentially fatal health risk, experts at Main Line Health have created a remote blood pressure monitoring program to support mothers at home following delivery.

Main Line Health’s Cardio Obstetrics team provides multi-disciplinary care to mothers who have underlying cardiovascular issues or develop them during pregnancy or during the post-partum period, according to team member Adena Brewington-Brown, CRNP, DNP.

“Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to support a mother,” Brown explained during a presentation at HAP’s recent Maternal Health Summit in Harrisburg.

Here are some key takeaways:

• Empowering Mothers:  After delivery, high-risk mothers at Main Line Health receive bedside education and a blood pressure machine to take home. They take daily blood pressure readings, which are sent to the hospital staff for monitoring. The readings allow staff to make medication adjustments and address serious issues.
• Dangerous Disparities:  There are significant racial and ethnic disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality in the U.S., said Brown.
  • Black mothers are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related death as compared with white mothers.
  • The preeclampsia rate is 60 percent higher in Black mothers than in white mothers and Black mothers are more likely to develop severe preeclampsia and preterm delivery, Brown said.
• Addressing Disparities:  Closing racial disparities in follow up visits by new mothers requires understanding and addressing the underlying factors, Brown said. “We want to focus on research and community outreach to determine what are the barriers,” she said.
• Knowledge is power:  Hypertension is the most common reason for postpartum hospital readmission, complicating up to 20 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. and contributing substantially to maternal morbidity and mortality in the post-partum period, said Brown.

Watch video coverage of HAP’s Maternal Health Summit online.