Women giving birth in the U.S. die at an alarmingly high rate compared with other wealthy countries, but maternal deaths are difficult to measure because they’re rare and number in the lots of every year. For journalists who want to track trends in maternal health quality, the index could also be a more useful measure severe maternal morbidity (SMM)which affects tens of hundreds of girls yearly.
As with maternal death, SMM can often be avoided. This is related to each antagonistic effects on the health of the mother and child, in addition to higher health care costs.
The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), conducted by the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, is a key source of SMM data.
Where to find HCUP data
State-level rates of significant maternal morbidity from 2010 to 2022 could be found at AHRQ’s Quick statistics on healthcare project costs and utilization. AND Brief statistical description of HCUP published in September presents trends for 2016-2021 by patient characteristics and kind of complications.
About data
According to AHRQ, HCUP is the nation’s most comprehensive source of care data, providing policymakers with a very important source of knowledge about outcomes, quality, costs and access to care.
Because there isn’t any database of all hospital stays in the U.S., HCUP calculates regional and national estimates using an all-payer database called the National Hospital Sample (NIS), which incorporates billing data for about 7 million hospital stays annually.
Rates of significant maternal morbidity are based on weighted NIS estimates using a mixture of 20 indicators of unexpected birth outcomes that may end up in complications that threaten the lady’s life. Documentation must indicate that the patient was female, aged 12–55 years, and had a diagnosis or procedure consistent with each SMM and in-hospital delivery.
The Severe Maternal Morbidity Index doesn’t reflect any complications that may occur after the patient returns home. Another drawback is the dearth of current state-level data for Idaho, New Hampshire, Nevada and Alabama.
Latest findings
According to the statistical report, the national SMM rate increased by 40% from 2016 to 2021, from 72.0 to 101.1 per 10,000 delivery stays.
About half of that increase is expounded to the pandemic. Among delivery stays without Covid-19, the SMM rate increased by 21% from 72.0 per 10,000 in 2016 to 87.2 in 2021.
Asian/Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic race and ethnicity (56%); self-pay or no fees (48%); aged 12–19 and 20–24 (44%); from the center income area (43%); and from a big metropolitan area (42%) are the aspects related to the biggest increases over six years.
Among possible complications, the best increases included respiratory complications (137%), renal complications (119%), and sepsis (54%).
Finding experts on the local level
Ask public health officials and girls’s health experts what influences the statistics in your state or region. For more information, please see the Commonwealth Fund release notes, Severe maternal morbidity in the United States: A primer.
Trends in serious maternal morbidity are of particular interest in states where abortion care has been severely limited. Most recently, former American Medical Association president Jack Resneck Jr said Mrs. Magazine that continuing a pregnancy poses “significantly greater dangers” than medical abortion, with the danger of SMM being best for people of color, low-income people and people living in rural areas.
