As Regional Director of Inpatient Obstetrics, Sarah Mandel, MD, consistently drives improvements that advance quality, safety, and equity for maternity patients across KP Northern California. She partners with Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Neonatology, Pediatrics, outpatient OB/GYN, Anesthesiology, certified nurse-midwives, nursing leadership, and hospital operations to solve complex problems and works closely with Kaiser Foundation Hospital partners to ensure that TPMG and nursing work collaboratively side-by-side.
Dr. Mandel has championed efforts to reduce care disparities, launching the first Crossing the Quality Chasm (CQC) metric to track low-risk cesarean rates among black patients. To close care gaps, she partnered with the California Maternity Quality Collaborative Council to implement toolkits for equitably addressing hypertension and hemorrhage management during pregnancy.
Other maternity-related initiatives launched by Dr. Mandel include sepsis protocols, the integration of personal birth doulas, and care pathways for pregnant patients with urgent health concerns. Likewise, Project Permission integrates communications skills training, trauma-informed care, and culturally responsive practices to ensure that respectful communication is foundational to safe maternity care across the region.
“It’s about improving care for all of our pregnant population and empowering them to be the key decision-makers,” Dr. Mandel says. “To have the knowledge at their fingertips, feel empowered, ask questions, challenge, and do whatever they need to have agency over their birth experience.”