AHRQ Primer on Maternal Safety Addresses Efforts To Combat Pregnancy-Related Mortality

A new AHRQ primer that looks at the significant risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth examines how those risks are being addressed nationally through the development of maternal care safety bundles and safety tools. Safety bundles are sets of evidence-based clinical practices developed to improve care. Pregnancy-related deaths have more than doubled in the United States, from 7.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 17.2 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2011 and 2015. AHRQ offers a perinatal safety toolkit from which two strategies—communication and teamwork—are currently being integrated with two maternal safety bundles and evaluated for effectiveness. Access the new primer from AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet).