GREENSBORO, N.C. (WFMY) -- Every year, thousands of women suffer life-altering injuries or die during childbirth because hospitals and medical workers skip safety practices known to head off disaster, a USA TODAY investigation has found.
Some of the allegations include women left to bleed out, suffer organ failure and stroke and even death.
Among the major North Carolina hospitals listed in the report; Women’s Hospital in Greensboro, Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington and Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.
"We have actually made very nice progress, we have decreased our postpartum hemorrhage rate here at Women's Hospital in Greensboro by 5%. In fact, we have had no stroke and we have had no maternal deaths in 2 years," said Dr. Vernon Stringer, a leading Obstetrician, and Gynecologist at Women's Hospital.
USA today contacted Cone Health for the report 16 months ago and the hospital's management was swift to respond to the claims made inside the report. Dr. Vernon Stringer said there are many factors that lead to childbirth-related deaths.
"Access to care, part of it is the management of hypertension, part of it is the morbidities that patients can experience when they are pregnant," said Dr. Stringer.
The report revealed that at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, nearly 40-percent of mothers did not receive timely blood-pressure treatments. The failure rate was 78 percent at Carolinas HealthCare System NorthEast in Concord and nearly 90 percent at Stanly Regional Medical Center in Albemarle.
At Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington, North Carolina, the breakdown was almost universal, according to the report. Only one of the 48 maternity patients with dangerous blood pressure readings got proper treatment.
Officials at each of these hospitals said their performance has since improved.
According to federal records obtained by USA TODAY, Women’s Hospital in Greensboro failed to provide timely blood pressure treatment for 189 of 219 mothers, according to its own monthly tallies from October 2015 through June 2016.
In the report by USA TODAY, Cone Health, which operates Women’s Hospital and Alamance Regional Medical Center, said it had just started training staff to quickly treat dangerous blood pressure – even though ACOG issued its treatment warning in 2011.
Cone Health defended the delayed training by saying ACOG treatment guidelines aren't mandatory and its own hospitals and doctors needed time to evaluate whether the best practices being touted by the nation’s top experts were appropriate.
"There are some guidelines that would suggest that if a blood pressure is repeated in a certain length of time then that may improve the outcome, but I don't want anyone to think that these patients were not cared for," Dr. Stringer told WFMY News 2'S Adaure Achumba.
Cone Health leaders said they had already begun making changes prior to being contacted for the report and one of their goals was to decrease strokes and seizures in pregnant women.
The new numbers, also published in the USA today article showed that at Women’s Hospital, 84 percent of mothers with high blood pressure got proper treatment from June 2016 to April 2017, officials said. At Alamance, it was 72 percent. And the number of mothers suffering seizures and strokes – consequences of dangerous, untreated high blood pressure – have dropped.
Cone Health released the following statement about the report findings:
USA Today published an article on maternal deaths today. Data was presented from health systems across the country addressing efforts to reduce hemorrhage, strokes, and deaths related to pregnancy. Cone Health was first contacted by the newspaper’s reporter more than 16 months ago.
Most hospitals declined to talk with the reporter. We elected to participate in the interview to share Cone Health’s perspective. Our participation allowed us to point out that we have improved our care for women greatly – a strong contrast to those organizations that refused to respond. In fact, as of today, we have shown improvement in key quality metrics including management of obstetrical hemorrhage, management of elevated blood pressures and morbidity and mortality.
Cone Health has a long and proven record of providing outstanding obstetrical care to women in our region. We joined the quality improvement project knowing that full results would be reflected outside of the reporting period. But an opportunity to improve the care we provide our patients was something we did not want to pass up. The project has worked well for our patients. The goal was to decrease strokes and seizures in pregnant women. Cone Health has moved from our baseline in 2015 of 1.3% of hypertensive patients experiencing a seizure and 0.28% suffering a stroke to .5% and 0%, respectively, in 2016.
Our focus continues to be providing exceptional care for our delivering mothers. We remain committed to the safety and superior care of our patients. We appreciate the efforts of all providers and staff who help us to accomplish that goal.
Women’s Hospital was the first hospital in the state to develop and implement a comprehensive Postpartum Hemorrhage protocol that starts when every pregnant patient enters the hospital and continues through her hospital stay. Within the first year of implementing the PPH Protocol, we decreased our postpartum hemorrhage rate by 50%, which was well below the state and national average.
Both ARMC The Birthplace and Women’s Hospital are 100% compliant with the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) bundles for hypertension and hemorrhage that is mentioned in the USA Today article.