Premier Statement on Maternal Mortality

The report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths,” is a clear indication of the critical need to better integrate care delivery between the hospital and pre- and post-care services for mothers and their newborns, as well as to better manage high-risk patients.

Premier also released a nationally representative report on maternal mortality and morbidity today, showing a 24 percent decline in deaths during in-hospital deliveries from 2008-2018 across 900+ hospitals. Additionally, we found that the mortality disparity gap between whites and all other races substantially narrowed, and specifically found that delivery-related deaths for black mothers decreased by 80 percent over the 10-year period.

Premier’s analysis completes the CDC’s data because it examines one site of care. While the CDC data pertains to all pregnancy-related deaths, Premier’s analysis highlights inpatient-related maternal mortality, at the time of delivery.

The CDC’s analysis, along with Premier’s, underscores the essential need to better integrate and manage care outside of the inpatient setting. But to tackle the problem effectively, providers need to know where to focus. To be clear, if the disparity gap is narrowing for in-hospital delivery-related mortality, but widening overall, that means we need to focus beyond the hospital to the care mothers are receiving pre- and post-delivery. This is why it is imperative that mothers get to the hospital for urgent care of pregnancy-related complications and to safely deliver their babies. We believe this also underscores the need for new payment models and a focus on incentivizing integrated care across ambulatory and inpatient settings.