The impact of birth settings on pregnancy outcomes in the United States.

In the United States, 98.3% of patients give birth in hospitals, 1.1% give birth at home, and 0.5% give birth in freestanding birth centers. This review investigated the impact of birth settings on birth outcomes in the United States. Presently, there are insufficient data to evaluate levels of maternal mortality and severe morbidity according to place of birth. Out-of-hospital births are associated with fewer interventions such as episiotomies, epidural anesthesia, operative deliveries, and cesarean deliveries. When compared with hospital births, there are increased rates of avoidable adverse perinatal outcomes in out-of-hospital births in the United States, both for those with and without risk factors. In one recent study, the neonatal mortality rates were significantly elevated for all planned home births: 13.66 per 10,000 live births (242/177,156; odds ratio, 4.19; 95% confidence interval, 3.62-4.84; P<.0001) vs 3.27 per 10,000 live births for in-hospital Certified Nurse-Midwife-attended births (745/2,280,044; odds ratio, 1). These differences increased further when patients were stratified by recognized risk factors such as breech presentation, multiple gestations, nulliparity, advanced maternal age, and postterm pregnancy. Causes of the increased perinatal morbidity and mortality include deliveries of patients with increased risks, absence of standardized criteria to exclude high-risk deliveries, and that most midwives attending out-of-hospital births in the United States do not meet the gold standard for midwifery regulation, the International Confederation of Midwives' Global Standards for Midwifery Education. As part of the informed consent process, pregnant patients interested in out-of-hospital births should be informed of its increased perinatal risks. Hospital births should be supported for all patients, especially those with increased risks.

Neonatal outcomes of births in freestanding birth centers and hospitals in the United States, 2016-2019.

BACKGROUND: Births in freestanding birth centers have more than doubled between 2007 and 2019. Although birthing centers, which are defined by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as ". . . freestanding facilities that are not hospitals," are being promoted as offering women fewer interventions than hospitals, there are limited recent data available on neonatal outcomes in these settings. OBJECTIVE: To compare several important measures of neonatal safety between 2 United States birth settings and birth attendants: deliveries in freestanding birth centers and hospital deliveries by midwives and physicians. STUDY DESIGN: This is a retrospective cohort study using the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, and Division of Vital Statistics natality online database for the years 2016 to 2019. All term, singleton, low-risk births were eligible for inclusion. The study outcomes were several neonatal outcomes including neonatal death, neonatal seizures, 5-minute Apgar scores of <4 and <7, and neonatal death in nulliparous and in multiparous women. Outcomes were compared between the following 3 groups: births in freestanding birth centers, in-hospital births by a physician, and in-hospital births by a midwife. The prevalence of each neonatal outcome among the different groups was compared using Pearson chi-squared test, with the in-hospital midwife births being the reference group. Multivariate logistic regression models were performed to account for several potential confounding factors such as maternal prepregnancy body mass index, maternal weight gain, parity, gestational weeks, and neonatal birthweight and calculated as adjusted odds ratio. RESULTS: The study population consisted of 9,894,978 births; 8,689,467 births (87.82%) were in-hospital births by MDs and DOs, 1,131,398 (11.43%) were in-hospital births by midwives, and 74,113 (0.75%) were births in freestanding birth centers. Freestanding birth center deliveries were less likely to be to non-Hispanic Black or Hispanic, less likely to women with public insurance, less likely to be women with their first pregnancy, and more likely to be women with advanced education and to have pregnancies at ≥40 weeks' gestation. Births in freestanding birth center had a 4-fold increase in neonatal deaths (3.64 vs 0.95 per 10,000 births: adjusted odds ratio, 4.00; 95% confidence interval, 2.62-6.1), a more than 7-fold increase in neonatal deaths for nulliparous patients (6.8 vs 0.92 per 10,000 births: adjusted odds ratio, 7.7; 95% confidence interval, 4.42-13.76), a more than 2-fold increase in neonatal seizures (3.91 vs 1.94 per 10,000 births: adjusted odds ratio, 2.19; 95% confidence interval, 1.48-3.22), and a more than 7-fold increase of a 5-minute Apgar score of <4 (194.84 vs 28.5 per 10,000 births: adjusted odds ratio, 7.46; 95% confidence interval, 7-7.95). Compared with hospital midwife deliveries, hospital physician deliveries had significantly higher adverse neonatal outcomes (P<0.001). CONCLUSION: Births in United States freestanding birth centers are associated with an increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes such as neonatal deaths, seizures, and low 5-minute Apgar scores. Therefore, when counseling women about the location of birth, it should be conveyed that births in freestanding birth centers are not among the safest birth settings for neonates compared with hospital births attended by either midwives or physicians.

Professionally responsible counseling about birth location during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If the worries about the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are not already enough, some pregnant women have been questioning whether the hospital is a safe or safe enough place to deliver their babies and therefore whether they should deliver out-of-hospital during the pandemic. In the United States, planned out-of-hospital births are associated with significantly increased risks of neonatal morbidity and death. In addition, there are obstetric emergencies during out-of-hospital births that can lead to adverse outcomes, partly because of the delay in transporting the woman to the hospital. In other countries with well-integrated obstetric services and well-trained midwives, the differences in outcomes of planned hospital birth and planned home birth are smaller. Women are empowered to make informed decisions when the obstetrician makes ethically justified recommendations, which is known as directive counseling. Recommendations are ethically justified when the outcomes of one form of management is clinically superior to another. The outcomes of morbidity and mortality and of infection control and prevention of planned hospital birth are clinically superior to those of out-of-hospital birth. The obstetrician therefore should recommend planned hospital birth and recommend against planned out-of-hospital birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased stress levels for all patients and even more so for pregnant patients and their families. The response in this difficult time should be to mitigate this stress and empower women to make informed decisions by routinely providing counseling that is evidence-based and directive.