ArticleHealth affairs scholar2025
Making the "Birthing-Friendly" hospital designation better.
Article in Health affairs scholar, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
The "Birthing-Friendly" designation, intended to guide birthing individuals toward quality hospitals, has become widespread. However, our analysis of hospital data finds that the Birthing-Friendly designation does not differentiate hospitals based on meaningful quality measures. Our analysis shows that while Birthing-Friendly hospitals are larger and engage in quality improvement efforts, they do not consistently outperform non-designated hospitals on core maternal health metrics such as early elective delivery rates or births-to-staff ratios. The designation likely reflects a hospital's capacity to adopt basic quality improvement programming structures more than its ability to provide consistent, high-quality maternal care. To address this, we propose a more robust measure that includes clinical outcomes, patient experiences, and equity metrics, particularly for marginalized groups like Black and Indigenous birthing people.
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