Study Links Hospital Quality to Newborn Racial Health Disparities

A new study has found that Black and Hispanic women were more likely to deliver in hospitals with high complication rates for low-risk infants than were white or Asian women. The findings implicate hospital quality in contributing to preventable newborn health disparities among low-risk, term births, the study says. The study, “Hospital Quality of Care and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Unexpected Newborn Complications,” which will be published in the September 2021 issue of Pediatrics (published online Aug. 24), used 2010-2014 birth certificate and discharge abstract datasets from 40 New York City hospitals to conduct a retrospective cohort study of 483,834 low-risk neonates. The rate of unexpected complications was 48.0 per 1,000 births. Adjusted for patient characteristics, morbidity risk was higher among Black and Hispanic infants compared to white infants. Approximately one-third of Black and Hispanic women gave birth in hospitals ranking in the highest morbidity tertile compared to 10% of white and Asian women. Quality improvement targeting routine obstetric and neonatal care is critical for equity perinatal outcomes, the authors conclude.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.