The influence of hospitals, providers, and patients in birth outcomes following induction of labor.

Strategies to optimize birth outcomes are a top priority in the current health care delivery system, where the examination and elimination of health disparities in childbearing women remain an important public health objective.

Several studies have examined the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES), occupational status, ethnicity, insurance status, health care utilization, and educational level on birth outcomes, all known to influence gestational age and newborn mortality.

Lesser-known variables are the influence of provider practice and hospital characteristics on birth outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate several dimensions of birth outcomes employing birth certificate records and information available from provider licensing surveys for a one year period to calculate how much variation was due to differences in; (a) hospital organizational characteristics; (b) provider characteristics; and (c) patient socio-demographic characteristics.

The Quality Health Outcomes Model by Mitchell et al. (1998) provided a valuable framework which allowed the analysis of the interplay between intervention, client, and system characteristics, and their impact on birth outcomes for Maricopa County in 2005.

The study design was a retrospective descriptive study using secondary data analysis with a dataset (Arizona HealthQuery, housed at the Center for Health Information and Research at Arizona State University) that included birth certificate information and the physician licensing renewal surveys.

Secondary data analysis of this large administrative dataset provided the advantage of having a large sample size (62,816) of demographically diverse cases, thus minimizing concerns related to sample size and generalizability.

Multiple regression and non-linear estimation models were deployed to control for confounding and effect modifying variables that could influence the relationship of labor induction on birth outcomes, including prolonged labor, use of forceps or vacuum extractors, cesarean births, Apgar scores, and newborn intensive care unit (NICU) admission.