NYS Abortion Reduction — A Coalition of Pro-Life Clinicians

Mission

Because all people are made in God’s image and are equally valuable, CompassCare is dedicated to erasing the need for abortion by transforming a woman’s fear into confidence.

Problem

  • New York State has more abortions per capita than any other state.
  • In 2019, NY politicians made abortion a fundamental human right including abortion as part of women’s reproductive health care.
  • The pro-life community in NY does not have the facilities and medical staff to serve more than 2% of women considering abortion.

Goal

Reduce NY abortions by adding CompassCare medical offices in additional abortion hubs like Brooklyn.

Approach

Through the remote oversight of Medical Director Katherine Lammers, MD, FACOG, for the last 18 years CompassCare’s nursing teams in Rochester have delivered proven medical service processes for women considering abortion, providing the support and security they need to feel free to say “no” to abortion. An expansion to Brooklyn is expected to triple patient volumes within two years. A volunteer coalition of pro-life clinicians will join Dr. Lammers and Dr. Theresa Rush of Buffalo to continue to expand services across the state to a significantly underserved population: women at-risk for abortion. The collation of at least 8 clinicians will remotely oversee the nurses delivering patient care on a rotating basis.

Concept is Working

CompassCare developed the infrastructure to reach and serve over 25% of all women considering abortion in Rochester resulting in a 50% reduction in abortion. To test repeatability, CompassCare expanded services into Buffalo, the largest abortion hub in NY State outside of NYC. After two years, Buffalo is on track to duplicate the results of Rochester. The next step is to expand life-saving services in Brooklyn, the county with more recorded abortions per year than any other in the U.S. By continued expansion to five abortion hubs CompassCare projects saving 44,000 lives by 2029 that would otherwise be lost to abortion.

Opportunity

CompassCare’s results show 1) more women considering abortion can be served with ethical medical care and more babies can be saved, and 2) there is a proven methodology to do it. This requires a network of physicians to partner together to oversee life-saving medical services for up to 6,200 women considering abortion per year by 2024.

Why CompassCare?

CompassCare has earned a national reputation for helping pregnancy centers increase their service capacity and overall performance in helping abortion-minded women have their babies.

2002

First medicalized Pro-Life pregnancy center in New York State.

2004

CompassCare began training pregnancy centers in New York and across the nation to restructure and improve performance.

2005

Pioneered a now nationally accepted philosophy of ministry in the pregnancy center movement that is a data driven, continuous improvement system called a Linear Service Model. CompassCare created the first patient database for service delivery with metrics to evaluate service performance and analyze targeted service delivery changes for continuous improvement.

2007

Created a training system to help other pregnancy centers nationwide serve more women more effectively by implementing CompassCare’s systems.

2012

Open-sourced patient service systems. Now an estimated 550 pregnancy centers nationwide are using CompassCare’s language or service systems to some degree with several organizations attempting to replicate the concepts on their own.

2015

Launched medical process management software, Optimize, to help pregnancy centers actively engage continuous improvement in services for women seriously considering abortion.

2018

The NYS Abortion Reduction Plan was initiated as CompassCare adopted three pregnancy centers in the Buffalo region, the largest abortion-hub in the state outside of New York City.

CompassCare is ideally situated to stay on the leading edge of service. New York is an aggressively pro-abortion state with the most permissive abortion laws and the highest abortion rates per capita than any other state in the Union. CompassCare has a track record of overseeing the abortion numbers cut in half while the abortion industry scrambles to stay afloat by diversifying services, reducing staff, consolidating administration, and simply going out of business.

Medical Oversight of Services to Women Considering Abortion

CompassCare has nearly 20 years of experience in New York State serving women considering abortion with ethical medical care. CompassCare is currently facilitating the service of over 1,000 new patients per year in Western NY. Medical services are provided by registered nurses employed by CompassCare whose care is supervised remotely by two volunteer medical directors, Dr. Katherine Lammers and Dr. Theresa Rush.

Clinicians oversee RNs providing care on three medical service platforms:

  1. Pregnancy confirmation and options consultation for women considering abortion
  2. STD testing and treatment
  3. Abortion pill reversal through progesterone therapy

Nurses are trained to perform all services according to protocols and standing orders signed by the Lead Medical Director, freeing the overseeing physician to focus on diagnosis and the rare patient requiring a unique course of treatment.

Responsibilities

The primary responsibilities of overseeing physicians are to:

  1. Confirm intrauterine pregnancy by reading/signing limited obstetric ultrasound imaging via a secure, mobile-friendly cloud-based software system specially built for CompassCare.
  2. Approve prescriptions for anti-nausea medication on a per-patient basis as notified by RN team members via text message or phone.
  3. Be available to the nursing team via text message or phone for questions about unusual patient presentations.

CompassCare envisions a coalition of 8-12 clinicians sharing the responsibility for medical oversight on a rotating basis. Such a coalition would allow for a dramatic life-saving increase of ethical medical care to serve thousands more women seriously considering abortion in NYC without undue burden on any one individual.

Legality

Remote oversight of direct patient care by off-site physicians happens every day in schools, nursing homes, and clinics of various kinds. Despite intense scrutiny from the pro-choice state government, CompassCare’s model is perfectly legal.

Liability

Except in rare cases where a physician’s existing liability coverage includes any volunteer activities they perform, CompassCare will cover medical liability expenses associated with a physician’s participation in the coalition.

Current Status

CompassCare in Rochester intentionally developed a service process and infrastructure with the capacity to reach and serve 25% of the abortion market. Abortion in Rochester plummeted 50% in the last nine years, a decline that is nearly twice as fast as the rest of Upstate NY.

The strategy is to replicate Rochester’s effectiveness in the state’s other abortion hubs, with up to a five-year 50% abortion reduction goal in each market. CompassCare’s Buffalo pilot is working. Buffalo’s capacity to serve the abortion market grew from 1% to 18% in just two years. 127 lives were saved in Buffalo in 2020, more than a 50% increase over the previous year. Based on Rochester’s experience, the Buffalo pilot is on track to see abortions cut in half by the end of year five.