Articles

Hospitals try to keep their childbirth complications rates secret

March 25, 2019

The efforts of doctors and hospitals to keep their complication rates secret, are harming patients.

A USA Today article reveals: “People facing hip and knee replacement can go online and find out how often those surgeries go awry at hospitals across the country. They can look up a hospital’s death rates for stroke and heart attack patients, too, or how many of its patients get infections.”

“Yet, in the United States – the most dangerous country in the developed world to give birth – maternity hospitals’ childbirth complication rates are a well-guarded secret. Many hospitals know them. So do many state health agencies, insurance companies and researchers. But they fear the complication rates are too complex for regular folks to understand.”

That’s why USA TODAY published severe complication rates for hundreds of maternity hospitals in 13 states where its journalists obtained records documenting patients’ care. USA TODAY sought the data in all 50 states, but many refused to provide it or imposed restrictions rendering the data useless.

The rates are a starting point for scrutinizing a hospital’s maternity care. As one patient safety expert stated: “It’s important we treat providers fairly, but it’s also important we hold them accountable . . . The act of collecting and reporting – especially public reporting – of results can make a difference in accountability and quality of care.”

What should you do?

If you are pregnant and going to deliver your baby in one of the 13 states that allowed access to complication data, you may want to check it out and address any concerns you have about safe care at your hospital with your doctor before delivery.  

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Source & to read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/deadly-deliveries/2019/03/07/childbirth-complication-rates-secret-heres-why-were-revealing-them/2927105002/

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