Here’s How Dangerous It Is To Give Birth In Michigan

The United States is the most dangerous place in the developed world for a woman to give birth with a maternal death rate that has risen sharply between 1990 to 2015 while the rates have dropped in other developed nations, according to an investigation by USA Today.

The investigation looked at two primary categories of data: the maternal death rate and state “harm” rates, which includes complications during or soon after birth.

The death rate in Michigan is 19.4 out of every 100,000 births and the harm rate is 139 per 10,000 deliveries.

Michigan has a team to review deaths from childbirth complications but the team does there is not much transparency in the findings, according to USA Today’s findings.

Here’s how USA Today categorized the team assigned to review the state’s childbirth deaths:

“Michigan has been reviewing maternal deaths since 1950 and in 2017 passed a law requiring doctors and others to report every death. It doesn’t publish findings often. A four-page executive summary was published in 2018, 12 years after its previous report. The earlier report hardly mentioned medical issues, concentrating instead on social problems, such as domestic violence. The 2018 report, which looked at cases from 2011-2015, alluded generally to a few medical issues in its recommendations, saying, for instance, that doctors need to look out for long-term problems among women who have had preeclampsia or gestational diabetes.”

Here are some of USA Today’s key findings:

• Estimates say about half of the U.S.’ 700 maternal deaths could be prevented and half of the 50,000 maternal injuries prevented or reduced with better care
• Hospitals across the country fail to perform basic medical tasks that could be life-saving
• The maternal death rate has fallen in California and the state is considered an exception in the country with its health care practices regarded as the gold standard of care
• Regulators and oversight boards could require hospitals to do more
• Women interviewed by USA Today described feeling “frustrated, angry and powerless” because of practitioners they felt didn’t listen to them or weren’t prepared for emergencies
• It can take long periods of times for best practices to be adopted by health care providers in the U.S.

Read the full USA Today Investigation here.

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