To my knowledge, the state has not published this same data for 2009.

Warmly,

Jen

Love ya,
Evelyn

Thanks for leaving your comment. You sound like a fellow number cruncher and I always appreciate feedback so I can make the content better!

The column heading definitions can be found at the top of the article where “VBAC, Uncomplicated” is defined as excluding “abnormal presentation, preterm birth, fetal death, multiple gestation, and breech procedures” whereas “VBAC” includes all VBACs attended at that facility.

Looking at your example of Alameda County Medical Center, they list 50 uncomplicated VBACs and 55 VBACs total. This means that they had 5 VBACs that were complicated: “abnormal presentation, preterm birth, fetal death, multiple gestation, and breech procedures.”

I would also love to have all of the information you listed in one database and have spent many hours trying to make that available. Unfortunately, we can only work with what is made available by the state and are limited by the quality of the data.

At the time I wrote this article, I was working with two databases containing a few hundred variables each maintained by the the state of California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. I was unable to combine these two databases since they did not share a unique identifier column. I have shared the VBAC data from the Utilization Rates database. It’s not that I’m comparing the variables per se, but just sharing the information that the state collected.

The other database was entitled Hospital Annual Utilization Data which contained some of the variables you wanted and more. Would be really wonderful to combine those two databases so that consumers can get a more complete picture of their local hospital options.

I shared this information because it can be used by different people in a multitude of ways. For women pregnant with their first child, they might consider the primary and total cesarean rates of their local hospitals. The World Health Organization recommends a 10-15% cesarean rate, so women can use that as a benchmark in deciding for themselves if a hospital performs to many cesareans.

For women pregnant after a cesarean, they would be interested in the VBAC rate. A hospital with a 4% VBAC rate is not a VBAC friendly hospital and any woman admitted to that hospital seeking a VBAC will likely be viewed as an anomaly. Women seeking VBAC should strongly consider the hospital, and OB practice, with the highest VBAC rate.

I wish I could freeze the frame so the table would be easier to read. Unfortunately, copying and pasting the table from Excel into the article is a lot more difficult than it would seem (column widths/fonts/colors spontaneously changing) and I got to a point, after several hours, that I just had to get it the best I could and stop. I have provided a PDF file that has the table headings at the top of each page which you can download here and easily print.

Thanks again!

Warmly,

Jen

Note from VBAC Facts – This comment was originally left at VBAC & Cesarean Rates of California Hospitals, 2006 but due to a technical error, which I’m unable to correct, it moved to this page.