We, the members of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding, strongly applaud the Joint Commission for setting a new requirement under the perinatal care core measure set that hospitals track and record exclusive breast milk feedings among term newborns beginning April 2010, and we strongly disagree with the comments by Flaherman and Newman.1
Because of poor hospital performance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the maternity care practices survey (mPINC), the results of which indicated that many birth centers are in need of quality improvements to facilitate breastfeeding. It was surprising that 25% of the hospitals reported that they routinely provided formula to breastfeeding infants. We believe that having exclusive breast milk feeding data available to birth hospitals will be a driver of quality and might indicate populations more or less likely to suffer adverse health outcomes because of early exposure...
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