I thought this article was very interesting. I am sure this is a problem that is spreading across the nation. Why are the pregnancy related deaths rising? This article takes a closer look and searches for answers instead of continuing to blow this off and assuming this country couldn't be doing something wrong, we just have more high risk women (or whatever other excuses I've heard.)
Excerpt:
"In 2002, Dr. David Lagrew, the medical director of the Women’s Hospital at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Orange County, noticed that a lot of women were having their labor induced before term without a medical reason. And he knew that having an induction doubled the chances of a C-section.
So he set a rule: no elective inductions before 41 weeks of pregnancy, with only a few exceptions. As a result, Lagrew said, the operating room schedules opened up, and the hospital saw fewer babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, fewer hemorrhages and fewer hysterectomies.
All this, however, came at a cost: The hospital had to take a cut in revenue for reducing the procedures it performed. Lagrew doubts that any hospital has increased its C-section rate in pursuit of profit, but he does note that the first hospitals to adopt controls on early elective inductions have been nonprofits.
According to a report issued by the advocacy group Childbirth Connection, “Six of the 10 most common procedures billed to Medicaid and to private insurers in 2005 were maternity related.” On average, a C-section brings in twice the revenue of a vaginal birth. Today, the C-section is the single most common surgical procedure performed in the United States.
“If all these guys were losing money on every C-section, well, what’s the old saying? Whenever they tell you it’s not about the money, it’s about the money,” Lagrew said.
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