Search Here

An analysis of data on more than 100,000 deliveries and term newborns from New York City Hospitals, noted that rates for certain quality indicators and complications for mothers and newborns varied significantly between hospitals, and were not correlated with performance measures designed to assess hospital-level obstetric quality of care, according to a new study. 

Severe maternal complications occur in about 60,000 women annually in United States and around 10 percent term infants experience neonatal complications.

Researchers used New York City discharge and birth certificate data sets from 2010 to determine whether two Joint Commission obstetric quality indicators were associated with severe maternal or neonatal complications.

They used published algorithm to identify that severe maternal complications occurred among 2,372 of 115,742 deliveries (2.4 percent), and neonatal complications occurred among 8,057 of 103,416 term newborns without birth defects (7.8 percent), according to the press release.

Rates for elective deliveries performed before 39 weeks of gestation ranged from 15.5 to 41.9 per 100 deliveries among 41 hospitals, the press release added.

The study is published in JAMA.