This month North Carolina hospital teams were brought together in one room to determine the next steps for decreasing our cesarean rate. Teams functioned as the state’s expert panel by using their knowledge and experiences to pinpoint specific areas for both process and practice improvements.
We continue to see a decline in the cesarean rate among patients with risk factors for cesarean section deliveries. Therefore, our expert panel is looking at what we can do to decrease the cesarean rate among the group of patients without risk factors for cesarean sections. We are also looking at patients that are not in labor and/or are not dilated upon presentation to our hospitals, as this group has shown to have over a two-fold increase for a cesarean over patients that present in labor and/or with a dilated cervix.
