[EQ] Geographic Variation In The Appropriate Use Of Cesarean Delivery

        Geographic variation

      Geographic Variation In The Appropriate Use Of Cesarean Delivery

      Katherine Baicker, associate professor. Department of Public Policy,
School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles.
      Kasey Buckles, assistant professor of economics. University of Notre
Dame, in Notre Dame, Indiana.
      Amitabh Chandra, assistant professor of public policy. The John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

      Health Affairs, doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.25.w355- August 8, 2006

      In Areas Where Cesareans Are More Frequent, The Operation Is Performed
On Less Appropriate Patients

      "....A study published today on the Web site of the journal Health
Affairs found great geographic variation in the use of cesareans, mostly
unrelated to patients' medical conditions. Rather, the study found that
nonmedical factors such as the density of providers and local medical
malpractice pressures drove variation in the cesarean rate. The study also
determined that counties performing cesareans more often could
      reduce the rate of this expensive and hazardous intervention by three
to five percentage points without increasing maternal or newborn
mortality...." [Ford, Kathleen]

      You can read the article at
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.25.w355

      Health Affairs is pleased to make this article freely accessible to
listserv readers for two weeks.

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Received on Thu Aug 10 09:54:32 2006