Statistics on over one million deliveries at 355 U.S. hospitals in 2008 and 2009 were studied based on Premier, Inc.’s Perspective database. This provides a fascinating large-scale look at the obstetrics population in the U.S. Let’s take a look (I’ve rounded the following numbers off and combined some categories from those given in the original article.)
How old are maternity patients?
- About half are in their 20s
- About 10 percent are teenage mothers
What kind of insurance do they have?
- 42 percent managed care
- 42 percent Medicaid
- 8 percent commercial – indemnity
- 3 percent self pay
- 6 percent other
How many patients…
- Delivered by C-section this time? 39 percent
- Have had a previous C-section? 18 percent
- Are of advanced maternal age? 16 percent
- Are delivering prematurely? 8 percent
- Are obese? 4 percent
What was the median length of stay?
- 2 days for vaginal delivery
- 3 days for C-section
What was the hospital risk-adjusted infection rate?
- 4.1 percent of all deliveries were complicated by infection
The authors found that “risk-adjusted infection rates following childbirth vary considerably across hospitals, and that key structural and organizational hospital features explain only a modest amount of this variation.”
Source: Goff, S.L., Pekow, P.S., and others. (2013, June). Patterns of obstetric infection rates in a large sample of U.S. hospitals. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 208(6). Author manuscript free here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3670964/pdf/nihms-443021.pdf Posted by AHA Resource Center (312) 422.2050, rc@aha.org
Filed under: Benchmarking, Patient safety, Posted by Kim Garber, Service lines | Tagged: Hospital maternity patients, Hospital obstetrics department, Hospital-acquired infections, Infections during childbirth |
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