Why Are So Many U.S. Women Dying During Childbirth? : News
“You have hospitals building these high-level NICUs to get these preemies, but they don’t spend the same resources on the maternal side,” Saade said.
Saade and his team published a commentary last fall in the Obstetrics & Gynecology journal calling for stratification, arguing that hospitals often transfer a woman only because they are unable to provide care for her baby.
“Most of the time no one is asking, ‘Can that other hospital care for the mother?’ That’s why we wrote this commentary. To me it was shocking and amazing,” Saade said. “We say, ‘We are going to send you here because they can take care of the baby.’ But almost half the time, the baby is premature or early because the mother is sick. Often, the mother needs as much attention as the baby or even more.”
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