Even though more than 500,000 births occur each year statewide, it can be hard for California consumers to find comparative information that helps them decide where to get the best care. The website and mobile app Yelp, in partnership with CHCF, now displays maternity care measures for the roughly 250 hospitals that deliver babies in California.
The partnership means this information has the potential to be seen by millions of people who turn to Yelp in their daily life to help make important decisions. The data for the measures come from www.CalHospitalCompare.org, a hospital quality website founded by CHCF and operated by Cal Hospital Compare, a multistakeholder nonprofit organization. In January 2018, Yelp added a mobile module. The maternity care data presented on Yelp will be refreshed semiannually.
The following measures are displayed on Yelp pages for hospitals in California that offer maternity care:
- Low-risk c-section rate: the percentage of caesarean section (c-section) deliveries in low-risk pregnancies to mothers having their first baby
- Breastfeeding rate: the percentage of newborns fed only breast milk before discharge from this facility
- Episiotomy rate: how often episiotomies are performed at this facility
- VBAC routinely availability: some hospitals do not routinely provide vaginal births after c-sections (VBACs)
- VBAC rate: how often vaginal births among women with a prior c-section occur at this facility, if it routinely provides them
This project is part of a larger statewide effort to reduce the rate of unnecessary low-risk, first-birth c-sections at every hospital in the state to the national goal of 23.9%. CHCF is working with several organizations, including the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, Smart Care California, Purchaser Business Group on Health, and the Hospital Quality Institute.
