Maternal Health: Information on and Federal Oversight of Mortality Review Committees

Filed 4h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Penarc · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Government Accountability Office reviewed Maternal Mortality Review Committees, the state and local bodies that examine why more than 600 women die each year in the U.S. from pregnancy-related causes, over 80 percent of them preventable according to the CDC. GAO looked at 10 committees and found they routinely factor in state and federal law and policy, with five reporting that their recommendations led states to extend Medicaid coverage to 12 months postpartum.

CDC plans to send about $134 million over five years to 52 states and territories to fund this work, and GAO found the agency is following recognized performance-management practices, including tracking how many committee recommendations actually get implemented. The committees also flagged mental health, substance use, and racial health equity as recurring themes, noting Black and American Indian/Alaska Native women die at twice the rate of white women.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Six hundred women a year, most of those deaths preventable, and the system's main response is a well-run committee that writes good recommendations and hopes states listen. Some do, extending Medicaid coverage after committees ask nicely enough. It's a fine model for figuring out what went wrong after the fact, less impressive as a plan for stopping it from happening again.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Comic Plodding · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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