The Leapfrog Group Releases Maternity Care Report

This week The Leapfrog Group released its Maternity Care Report, an in-depth examination of hospital quality and safety for early elective deliveries, episiotomies and high-risk deliveries, with data analysis by Castlight Health.

Though the analysis of hospitals nationwide demonstrates substantial progress in recent years, it also reveals significant room for improvement on maternity care standards. In fact, less than a third of hospitals meet Leapfrog’s standard for high-risk deliveries of very low birth weight babies, while rates of episiotomies are still too high at 35 percent of birthing hospitals.

The report is the first in a series of six reports examining key quality and safety measures at hospitals nationwide based on data from the 2014 Leapfrog Hospital Survey of 1,501 U.S. hospitals.

Several NBCH-member coalitions have focused on preventing medically unnecessary early elective deliveries. The Midwest Business Group on Health received a grant from NBCH and the United Health Foundation to convene health care stakeholders in Illinois and develop a community action plan to reduce the high number of early inductions and C-sections performed. And the Virginia Business Coalition on Health Foundation also has a program focused on education to ensure babies are born full term.