Content of Obstetrical Care Project: Practice Variations in Prenatal andIntrapartum Care. Abstract, Executive Summary and Appendices A and B

摘要

Obstetric care is one of the major health care services provided in the UnitedStates. There are over 4,000,000 births annually in this country, making this the most common hospital discharge and one of the most common reasons that patients visit physicians. Despite the ubiquity of this event, there is little consensus as to what constitutes optimal or even appropriate prenatal and intrapartum care. As a result, there are wide variations in medical practice patterns in obstetrics, variations that lead to major differences in the content of obstetrical care provided by a random sample of obsterical providers in one state and to determine the causes for postulated variations in the patterns of care. This report summarizes the study and its major results.