Best Hospitals For Maternity Care: 3 CT Hospitals On U.S. News List

CONNECTICUT — Where their baby is born is one of the most important decisions parents make. In Connecticut, three hospitals were ranked among the Best Hospitals for Maternity Care for 2022-23 released recently by U.S. News & World Report.

In the ranking of nearly 650 hospitals providing labor and delivery services, fewer than half received the “high performing” designation, the highest a hospital can receive for maternity care.

Of the 12 Connecticut hospitals that participated in the maternity services survey, the following received the “high performing” designation:

• Bridgeport Hospital delivers more babies than average, according to U.S. News. Doctors at Bridgeport Hospital usually avoid C-sections, and newborn complications are very rare at the facility.
• William W. Backus Hospital, in Norwich, is also excellent when it comes to avoiding C-sections, and its episiotomy rate is less than 5 percent.
• Yale New Haven Hospital is nationally ranked in 9 adult and 8 pediatric specialties and rated high performing in 3 adult specialties and 15 procedures and conditions, according to U.S. News, which ranked the facility No. 23 in the nation for obstetrics and gynecology.

Each hospital participating in the survey received a scorecard describing their performance on a checklist of items parents look for when choosing where to have their baby.

Other Connecticut hospitals that completed the U.S. News survey, but did not rank as “high performing” were Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, Danbury Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, Hartford Hospital, Hospital of Central Connecticut, Lawrence and Memorial Hospital, MidState Medical Center, Norwalk Hospital and St. Vincent's Medical Center.

U.S. News said relatively little information is readily available to the public about which hospitals are best at caring for expectant parents after an uncomplicated pregnancy.

The ranking differs from other hospital rankings in an important way: The patients at maternity hospitals are younger, so the data used in the rankings was collected individually from the hospitals, rather than through required Medicare reports.

The rankings are based on C-section rates in lower-risk pregnancies, newborn complication rates, exclusive breast milk feeding rates and early elective delivery rates, among other factors.

This year for the first time as part of its methodology, U.S. News considered rates of episiotomy procedures (a small cut made at the vaginal opening to assist in difficult deliveries), rates of vaginal births of subsequent children after a Cesarean delivery, and whether hospitals met new federal criteria for “birthing-friendly” practices — a publicly reported, public-facing designation by the Department of Health and Human Services to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.

Also new this year, hospitals that tracked and reported their outcomes for patients of different races and ethnicities were rewarded in the rankings.

“Identifying racial disparities in maternity care is a vital step toward achieving health equity,” Min Hee Seo, senior health data scientist at U.S. News, said in a news release.

“The new measures provide expectant parents with many important data points, such as whether hospitals implemented patient safety practices, to assist them in making a decision about where to receive maternity care,” Seo said.