Regionalised maternity care

This program of research uses existing population health data to determine to what extent women and babies are delivering in risk-appropriate hospitals or whether there is room for improvement through increased transfer of at-risk pregnancies to higher levels of care.

Recent projects include:

• Developing and validating indicators for measuring major maternal and neonatal morbidity in routinely collected population health datasets
• Exploring trends and risk factors for maternal morbidity
• Determining the accuracy of reporting of maternal medical and pregnancy conditions in population health data
• Assessing the health policy which requires that infants with antenatally identifiable congenital anomalies be delivered at hospitals with co-located paediatric surgical units
• Determining the reasons for increasing rates of postpartum haemorrhage
• Assessing trends and predictors of induction of labour and epidural analgesia for childbirth.