Case Histories - AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling

Case History of
6510 Sorensen Parkway, Omaha, NE
Michelle Sullivan, President
Barb Malek, Executive Director

The Challenges:

The challenges faced by AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling were common. Barb Malek, the Executive Director states, “The majority of the women we were seeing were negative test clients. Also, not too many of them were abortion minded. We had also been unsatisfied with our counseling process. It always seemed kind of hit and miss. We had noticed a mixed “quality of care” among those who volunteered for us. However, we didn’t have any way to evaluate or regulate it.”

The various problems faced by AAA CPC were hurting them as Barb explains: “After we moved in the summer of 2005, our numbers dropped. Our parenting program was doing well, but we were not doing very many pregnancy tests. The ones we were doing were for women who wanted to have their babies, and often went on to take our parenting program. The majority (probably 60-70%) were negative tests anyway.”

She continues, “Most of the patients we saw were drop-ins. This made it hard to know what to expect during any shift. Even though we had ultrasounds available, we had to re-schedule most of the women for those scans, since the nurse was not available during most of our shifts. The no-show rates for these rescheduled ultrasound appointments were very high.

We were also experiencing a lot of women with signs of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. We tried opening an STD clinic, but we had trouble getting women to keep their appointments.”

The Journey:

Barb and the team at AAA CPC attempted to solve these problems in a number of ways. Barb explains: “Mostly, we just tried any method that came up that looked good to us. We experimented with different forms of advertising and messages, but they were hit and miss. We added programs (parenting and our medical clinic) to meet needs as they came up. We adopted different techniques of counseling over the years, and mostly came up with our forms and methods. We would attend conferences, or talk to different Centers and use whatever looked good. There was no real plan to it. We can see now that what we needed was a clear purpose, with a well stated mission statement and strategies. We had those things in theory, but they were not focused or clear enough to help us determine if what we were doing were the right things nor if those things were being done well.”

The Discovery:

Then Barb received an email from NIFLA about an upcoming Webinar CompassCare was going to be hosting concerning the Optimization Tool. “What caught our attention was the information that CompassCare had been very successful at reaching the abortion minded woman. Of course this has always been our desire. We just didn’t know how to increase our success in doing it,” Barb explained.

The Solution and Results:

“The OT has been like a laser-beam, allowing us to clearly pinpoint the direction we want to go (reaching the abortion minded women) and then giving us clear steps as to how to get there,” said Barb. When asked what specifically about the OT was helpful for AAA CPC in accomplishing the mission Barb responded, “Not meaning to be too general- but everything! It is a tool which we have been able to easily adapt to our Center, and our community. We now have a clear vision, with clear steps to follow in achieving it, and a way to evaluate the things we are doing to make certain that we are on track, making the necessary adjustments along the way.

For example, I would like to compare June 2007 to June 2008. In June of 2007, we saw 55 total pregnancy test patients. In June of 2008, we had 54 positive tests, and saw a total of 90 patients. (In June of 2006, we only saw 27 patients for new pregnancy tests, with only 12 positive tests.) By the way, these were the statistics that drove us to seek out a new way of doing things. As a result, we found CompassCare. God is good! We have been able to pinpoint our advertising, and it is having visible results. Our advocates are feeling more secure in what they are doing, and we feel more secure knowing that we are having a consistency of care that we were never able to attain before.”

The following chart represents increased lives saved after implementing the CompassCare OT system.

Recommendation:

Barb notes, “On a scale from 1-10 we would rate CompassCare’s OT a ‘10’ definitely. It is a program that can be adapted to any community and have a great impact on the rates of abortion. That is very exciting. In fact we believe that we have had a direct financial impact on the abortion providers in Omaha. Since we have been experiencing such a dramatic increase in the number of women at risk for abortion, one of our local abortion providers has had to significantly downsize citing lack of business as the reason.”