Dr. Angela Bianco explains how labor and delivery is impacted by the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic. On a day-to-day basis, labor and delivery units are facing numerous obstacles including maintaining patient safety, screening and testing patients and partners for the virus, and keeping up with new mandates and CDC recommendations.
“We’re Still Open 24/7: Labor and Delivery During Corona” – with Dr. Angela Bianco
Share this post:
The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting healthcare providers nationwide, and that is especially true of New York City, where Maternal Fetal Medicine Associates is located. While many doctors have postponed and rescheduled appointments or moved them online, labor and delivery units must go on. Dr. Angela Bianco explains how her patients and colleagues at Mount Sinai are dealing with the ongoing crisis as regulations, CDC recommendations, and hospital practices change virtually day-by-day. The labor and delivery unit functions as a “hospital within a hospital,” with generally separate staff, triage, admissions, and operating rooms from the rest of the hospital. This creates unique challenges for the unit at this unsure and tough time. While she’s an experienced and capable physician, Dr. Bianco says “aside from my role as medical director, just as a human, a person, citizen, mother, wife… I never imagined I’d be living through anything that is akin to this.” She’ll explain how nothing that labor and delivery does is elective or nonessential and what her unit is doing to maintain patient safety, screen patients and partners for the virus, and keep up with changing regulations.
Dr. Angela Bianco is a board certified Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and director of obstetrics and medical director for labor and delivery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Dr. Bianco completed medical school at Pennsylvania State University before moving on to residency in OB/GYN at New York University Medical Center and fellowship training in Maternal Fetal Medicine at Mount Sinai. She has been practicing for approximately fifteen years and has special interests in prenatal diagnosis and the intrapartum course of women with medical or fetal complications. In addition to her practice Dr. Bianco is a teacher and supervisor of residents and fellows. She has published numerous articles on her research in OB/GYN in medical journals.
