Data Statement and Disclaimer
ExpectNY was developed by Northeast Business Group on Health (NEBGH), which does not recommend hospitals or settings of care. ExpectNY contains information and publicly available quality data expectant parents might find useful. Expectant parents should always talk with their physicians or care providers about any questions or concerns they may have.
The data that is included in ExpectNY is gathered from publicly available sources. Not all hospitals provide data to all these sources.
- Total C-Section – Health Data NY
- Fed Exclusively Breast Milk – Health Data NY
- Epidural Pain Relief – Health Data NY
- Episiotomy – Health Data NY
- Labor Induction – Health Data NY
- Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) – Health Data NY
- Birth Attended by Midwife – Health Data NY
Also displayed is other information that can be helpful for expectant parents. Several of the datasets were collected through independent survey outreach to hospitals, conducted by SIS International Research. The sources of this information include:
- Baby Friendly Designation – Baby Friendly USA
- Accessible by Mass Transit – algorithm
- Ability to Labor in Water – survey
- Lactation Consultants – survey
- Option to Give Birth in Water – survey
- Telemetry During Labor – survey
- Telemetry for Water Labor – survey
About Heath Data NY
New York State's Maternity Information Law requires each hospital to provide information about its childbirth practices and procedures. The maternity section of Health Data NY shows New York State Department of Health statistics on procedures and practices relating to pregnancy, birth and newborns. The New York State Department of Health makes no representation, warranty or guarantee relating to the data or analyses derived from these data.
For more information visit: https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/2901.pdf or https://healthdata.ny.gov/
About Baby Friendly USA
In 1991, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI), a global program to encourage broad-scale implementation of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. The BFHI assists hospitals in giving mothers the information, confidence and skills necessary to successfully initiate and continue breastfeeding their babies or safely feed with formula and gives special recognition to hospitals that have done so.
For more information visit: https://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/
About the Goals on This Site
There are standard goals for three of the measures used on ExpectNY:
This rate has also been adopted by The Leapfrog Group http://www.leapfroggroup.org/ratings-reports/rate-c-sections with the guidance of its maternity care expert panel http://www.leapfroggroup.org/about/expert-panelists
Episiotomy: In 2006, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a recommendation against the routine use of episiotomies and in 2008, the National Quality Forum also endorsed limiting the routine use of them. The Leapfrog Group has tracked hospitals’ rate of episiotomy since 2012, and in 2015, with the guidance of its maternity care expert panel http://www.leapfroggroup.org/about/expert-panelists, reduced its target rate to 5% http://www.leapfroggroup.org/ratings-reports/rate-episiotomy
Exclusive Breast Milk Feeding: The Healthy People 2020 benchmark relevant to breastfeeding is “Breastfed newborns receiving formula supplementation within the first 2 days of life” and the target rate is 14.2% https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/data-search/Search-the-Data#objid=4865 ExpectNY translates this to a target rate for feeding babies breastmilk exclusively in hospitals of 86%.
For all of the measures, the average of all hospitals on the site was calculated.
Red, yellow and green are used to signify an individual hospital’s rates compared with standard goals, or with the site average, if standard goals are not available.
Where only an average appears:
Green = hospital rate is more than two percentage points better than the average
Yellow = hospital rate is within two percentage points above or below the average
Red = hospital rate is more than two percentage points below average
In cases where there is both a standard goal and the average, the hospital rate appears as yellow if it falls between the average and the goal.
Questions
If a hospital believes its information is incorrectly reported, it may contact expectny@nebgh.org.
If an expectant parent has questions about a specific hospital, we encourage them to contact the hospital to gain additional information, as well as to talk with their doctor.