While much of the national discussion around the United States’ abysmal rate of maternal deaths and injuries has focused on the larger societal ills such as obesity and access to prenatal care, Deadly Deliveries zeroed in on one shocking and uncomfortable truth: Hospitals know how to protect mothers. They just aren’t doing it.
Across the nation, women giving birth needlessly die and suffer life-altering injuries because of substandard medical care, the USA Today investigation revealed. At some hospitals, internal records show that less than 15 percent of new mothers experiencing common yet dangerous emergencies promptly received treatments known to save lives. USA Today further revealed that state maternal death review committees frequently don’t scrutinize the medical care that mothers received in the days and hours before they died – instead focusing on women’s lifestyles or society’s problems.