Many women turn to Dr. Google the moment they become pregnant. After all, most physicians won’t see an expecting patient until after the eight-week mark. With appointments getting shorter and shorter, it’s no wonder that many patients leave the doctor’s office eager to claim agency and make confident choices—and find that on the internet. Unfortunately, though, not all info is created equal, or credible.
As a healthcare consultant, I use a lot of public and proprietary databases of information to build on my understanding of patient populations and communities at large. There’s plenty of reliable info out there, but it takes some digging to find.
Below, I wanted to share a list of some of my favorite data sources—an insider’s scoop—to help women feel confident in their decisions.
Choosing a healthcare provider
Say you haven’t found the best pediatrician or obstetrician, or you’ve changed insurance and must part ways with your old provider. While word of mouth is obviously a strong motivator, it’s not always possible. And there are many data sources that allow women to be extremely informed about the providers they see.
- Every state has a licensing board. You can check on disciplinary actions by individual or provider type. Here is an example website for Illinois. You may be able to search for nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives as well.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) runs Physician Compare, which allows you to view a profile for a CMS-certified provider and check on their general information and whether they participate in CMS-quality initiatives. You may also be able to see data on their performance.
Choosing a hospital
It is becoming a well-known fact that the site of birth has a major impact on labor outcomes. Choosing a site of care for this milestone is so personal. There are several resources to keep in mind to make an evidence-based decision if you are lucky enough to have multiple options nearby.
- First, every hospital maintains data on hospital and emergency room stays that it must report to the state government. As a result, every state has information on hospital stays and most do have some sort of patient- or consumer-facing interface where patients can review safety and quality metrics. Here are two examples, from Illinois and Arizona.
- CMS Hospital Compare functions similarly to the CMS Physician Compare site, providing general information on the quality of care at over 4,000 CMS-certified hospitals.
- Leapfrog also maintains a Hospital Compare site allowing patients to compare multiple hospitals on a variety of metrics including pediatric and maternity care, infection rates, and so forth. Leapfrog also shares data on early elective deliveries, C-sections, episiotomies, and high-risk deliveries by hospital. These are important stats to bear in mind, because they can be an indicator of how hospitals tend to handle a situation. Here is an example of the information Hospital Compare provides. It also offers Hospital Safety Grades.
- Most hospitals, especially children’s hospitals, provide outcome and safety data on their sites. Examples of key metrics to review are serious safety events and cardiac surgery outcomes.
- Some specialty and professional organizations also have data repositories that help you make better decisions about surgical or procedural outcomes. This is especially true for cardiac and congenital heart surgical outcomes and fertility clinics. The Society for Thoracic Surgeons allows patients to view surgical outcomes by hospital. The CDC also allows you to compare fertility clinics and understand the outcomes of their cycles by year. Researching fertility clinics that have the greatest average chances of success may be worth it since it is such an expensive and time-consuming commitment.
- Most birth centers that are accredited are listed and licensed birthing facilities can be found on state health facility registries.
- For many years, patient billing data has been used by the healthcare industry to make informed decisions about how patients access and use healthcare services. But it hasn’t been accessible to consumers. Recently, USA Today set out to collect some of this information to help its readership understand obstetrics outcomes and severe maternal morbidity rates by hospital. This can help patients understand how often women giving birth experience severe complications at a specific hospital. Of all the states surveyed, only 13 provided data on a cohort of 951 hospitals. USA Today created the Childbirth Complications Rates at Maternity Hospitals Database to provide that data along with C-section rates when possible.
After birth and beyond
Making informed, confident healthcare decisions can be stressful and overwhelming. But if the way you seek to overcome those feelings is by doing research, know that you’ve got resources to help you make the right choice.
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About the Author
Damiana A.
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Damiana Andonova is a healthcare strategy consultant focusing on women's and pediatric health and has completed several fellowships relating to obstetrics and gynecology in the United States and internationally. She has written for several hospital blogs including the Stanford Medicine 25 and is a published poet.