Becker's Hospital Review

28 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT & MEASUREMENT Black women lead maternal death rate in first CDC report in 13 years By Anuja Vaidya T he maternal death rate for 2018 was 17.4 deaths per 100,000 live births, and much higher among black women than other ethnicities, according to the first report on national maternal mortality the CDC has released since 2007. But this estimate may be a conservative figure, a prominent health expert said. e CDC has not released new data on maternal mortality in over a decade because a new coding method was being imple- mented. e new method involves the use of a pregnancy status checkbox item on the U.S. Standard Certificate of Death. As of 2018, the checkbox was added to death certificates in all 50 states, allowing the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics to begin gathering and publishing maternal mortality data again. e new data shows a total of 658 deaths were identified in 2018 as maternal deaths. It also found that the maternal death rate for non-Hispanic black women was 2.5 to 3.1 times the rates of non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women. Maternal death rates also increased with age. But the estimates the CDC reported may be conservative. Neel Shah, MD, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, tweeted that "placing a 'pregnancy' check box on the death certifi- cate was a step forward ... but in many cases this box was being checked in error and muddying the picture." e CDC has tried to address this issue "using a number of wonky exclusions. is yielded a more conservative estimate of the number of pregnancy-related deaths in our country," he tweeted. e CDC's maternal mortality data does not account for suicide or homicide. "It is very possible that the new CDC estimates are undercounting the ways in which mothers in [this] country are vul- nerable to dying of preventable causes," Dr. Shah tweeted. n Study: Barbershop screenings may boost diabetes diagnoses By Mackenzie Bean B arbershops may be an effective location to screen black men for diabetes who do not have a regular primary care physician, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. For the study, researchers tested the blood sugar levels of 290 black men at eight barbershops in New York City between Sept. 19, 2017, and Jan. 23, 2019. The barbershops were run by black owners and located in neighborhoods known for having a population that struggles with glycemic control. Testing revealed 10 percent of participants had blood sugar levels indicative of diabetes, and 28.3 percent had levels that qualified as predia- betes. "Our findings suggest that community-based di- abetes screening in barbershops owned by black individuals may play a role in the timely diagnosis of diabetes and may help to identify black men who need appropriate care for their newly diag- nosed diabetes," study authors concluded. n CMS updates star ratings: 4 things to know By Mackenzie Bean C MS updated its Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings on its Hospital Compare website Jan. 28. Four things to know: 1. CMS assigns star ratings to more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide based on their performance across seven quality areas: mortality, safety of care, readmission, patient experi- ence, effectiveness of care, timeliness of care and efficient use of medical imaging. 2. Here is a breakdown of the updated star ratings: • One star: 228 hospitals • Two stars: 710 hospitals • Three stars: 1,191 hospitals • Four stars: 1,136 hospitals • Five stars: 407 hospitals 3. Last August, CMS shared plans to update its star ratings methodology in 2020 based on public feedback. The agency will share its proposed changes this spring as part of its "Fiscal Year 2021 Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System" proposed rule. 4. CMS last updated its Star Ratings in February 2019. n

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