Yelp Adds Maternity Care Measures to Pages for All Hospitals that Deliver Babies in California

Yelp exists to empower and protect consumers, providing them with the information they need to make a decision, whether they are looking for a mover, a brunch spot, or even a hospital. Today, in partnership with the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) and Cal Hospital Compare, we are announcing that Yelp will begin displaying maternity care measures for the roughly 250 hospitals that deliver babies in California.

This maternity care data adds to the medical data we already share with consumers through ProPublica, including average emergency room wait times, dialysis clinic performance scores and nursing home fine information.

One in eight babies in the US is born in California where C-section rates for low-risk mothers vary from 10% to 70% depending on the hospital. The evidence suggests that a woman’s chance of having a C-section depends largely on the hospital where she delivers and the practices of her clinical team. This means, if you are an expecting mother in California, your birthing experience greatly depends on the hospital you choose.

We worked with CHCF, a foundation dedicated to advancing meaningful, measurable improvements in the way the health care delivery system provides care to the people of California, to identify some of the most important measures for patients to consider when choosing a hospital. The new partnership means this information has the potential to be seen by millions of consumers who turn to Yelp in their daily life to help make important decisions.

Now, in addition to being available at CalHospitalCompare.org, the following measures will be displayed on Yelp pages for hospitals in California that offer maternity care:

• • “Low risk” C-section rate – The percentage of Caesarean section deliveries in “low-risk” pregnancies to mothers having their first baby
  • Breastfeeding rate – The percentage of newborns fed only breastmilk before discharge from this facility
  • Episiotomy rate – How often episiotomies are performed at this facility
  • VBAC Routinely Availability – Some hospitals do not routinely provide vaginal births after C-sections (“VBACs”)
  • VBAC Rate –  How often vaginal births among women with a prior C-section occur at this facility if they routinely provide them

We hope that offering greater transparency into the performance of medical providers will hold doctors and hospitals accountable, and allow patients to select facilities that offer the highest quality care.