Middlebury– As part of the Vermont Regional Perinatal Health Project, representatives of the Porter Hospital Birthing Center recently reviewed the 2014 Perinatal Statistics for Vermont Community Hospitals at a May meeting sponsored by the Vermont Child Health and Improvement Program (VCHIP).”
This annual meeting of hospital providers of maternity care focuses on ways to continuously identify and implement improvement strategies for caring for women and infants at Vermont hospitals, including the review of key statistics of birthing centers throughout Vermont as compared to established quality standards.
Porter Hospital Birthing Center nurse manager, Danielle Bryant, represented Porter at this meeting and was extremely pleased with a number of key statistics that reflect well on the quality of care provided to area women in Addison County.
“Our birthing center has a 20% Cesarean section rate compared to the national average of 32% and is the third lowest C-section rate in the state of Vermont”, she said. “We also are extremely proud of the fact that we had zero non-medically indicated inductions prior to 39 weeks during the past year and that we had a 70% success rate for assisting women to successfully have a natural birth following a Cesarean birth (known as a “VBAC” birth),” she added.
Bryant also noted that Porter Hospital had the best rate in the state for the treatment of pregnant women who test positive for a bacterial infection called “Group Beta Strep” which can be passed to the baby at birth if not detected and treated during labor. “This is a very important quality indicator and we are very proud of the fact that we are performing at the highest level of any hospital in our state” she said.
In addition to high quality marks, Bryant notes that the Porter Hospital Birthing Center continues to attract more women to deliver in one of the five home-like birthing rooms. Porter has seen a steady increase in births since 2009 from 299 births that year to 376 births in 2014.