Page 15 - Delaware Medical Journal - July/August 2020

COVER STORY
A DAUNTING TASK
In 1985, the Medical Center of Delaware was just getting started, and being charged, along with others, with reducing the infant mortality rate for the First
State was a daunting task. At the time, Delaware was nearly the worst state in the country for infant mortality. Colmorgen’s method to begin to change this was simple: to teach and share his knowledge with other physicians. According to Medical Society of Delaware Past President Richard Henderson, MD, an OB/GYN, “he brought a higher level of training and knowledge that raised the level for all of us in OB/GYN. He shared his knowledge and information across the state, and would take consults with our colleagues in other counties, which was unique.”
Colmorgen spent 22 years at ChristianaCare leading a host of the health system’s various initiatives and committees, including holding a position as a member of the AIDS Task Force, being on the steering committee for
the Alliance for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, and serving as the Chairman of the Oversight Committee for Outpatient Services. He honed his skills as a specialist for high-risk pregnancies and worked tirelessly to help change the concerning trajectory Delaware was on. “The people who he trained, who are now physicians at the Delaware Center for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, they were all he designed,” said Henderson. According to a recent statistic from the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, the infant mortality rate has improved by more than seven percentage points since Colmorgen arrived in Delaware in 1985!
Those who have worked with him share the same message: that he is kind, direct, and generous to a fault with his time and knowledge. “He has a compass that is set
“HE HAS A COMPASS THAT IS SET TO ALWAYS DOING THE RIGHT THING, EVEN IF IT ISN’T THE POPULAR THING TO DO. HE IS ALWAYS READY TO JUMP IN. HE ANSWERS PHONE CALLS ALL THE TIME — EVEN IF HE DOESN’T KNOW WHO IS CALLING.”
to always doing the right thing, even if it isn’t the popular thing to do. He is always ready to jump in. He answers phone
calls all the time — even if he doesn’t know who is calling,” said Kim Petrella, MSN, RNC-OB, the Nurse Coordinator for the Delaware Perinatal Quality Collaborative. “He is a gentle giant, not
of knowledge. Everyone in the world of maternal health in Delaware knows: if you need to know something about mommas and babies, he is the one to ask.”
During his early years in Delaware, Colmorgen was a member of the Legislative Task Force on Infant Mortality. In 1994, he became a Commissioner and later the Chair of
the Delaware Child Death Review Commission, where he and the Commission review the case of every woman who dies in Delaware of a pregnancy-related complication. It’s
a position he still holds to this day.
He was the President of the State of Delaware Board of Medical Practice,
and a Fellow for the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States. He is currently the Medical Director of the Delaware Perinatal Quality Collaborative, as well as the President of the State of Delaware Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline.
— Kim Petrella, MSN, RNC-OB
As part of Colmorgen’s work with the Perinatal Quality Collaborative, his mission to decrease maternal and infant morbidity and mortality continues, but the upfront hurdles are to decrease obstetrical hemorrhage, decrease substance use disorder and neonatal abstinence syndrome, develop implicit bias training, and learn as much as possible about COVID-19 in pregnancy to share the lessons statewide. Colmorgen and the Collaborative are working closely to bring hospitals and health care agencies together to work hand-in-hand for the common goal of saving lives.
For more than two decades, Colmorgen has worked tirelessly with the March of Dimes, including making regular trips to Legislative Hall in Dover to help share his valued perspective and insight as a clinician. “I think legislators responded so well to him because he was honest and candid about what he was seeing and the need to dedicate resources and focus on healthy moms — and those healthy moms would lead to health babies,” said Aleks Casper, Regional Director of Advocacy & Government Affairs of the March of Dimes.
Colmorgen has served on the Executive Committee of the March of Dimes since 1992 and has held more than eight
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