Emails, Lisa Marie Hollier, professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Baylor College of Medicine, June 27, 2017

7:44 a.m.

You asked me yesterday about deaths in childbirth.  As I considered this question, I believe that the proportion of all maternal deaths that occur literally “in childbirth” would be largely equivalent across states.  Given the high rates of maternal mortality in Texas relative to other states, I believe this would mean that deaths “in childbirth” would  also be high in Texas relative to other states.

Regarding the CDC Wonder data, perhaps someone at the CDC would be helpful.  As we discussed, I have not pulled down that data by state.

Lisa Hollier

9:26 a.m.

As we discussed the paper by Dr. MacDorman, we reviewed the text of her discussion.  I agreed that the spike of the maternal mortality rate in such a short time period was unusual (based on Dr. MacDorman’s analysis, it did not appear to have happened in other states).

I stated that the task force was doing detailed reviews of all cases from 2012 in part because this was the spike year.

It wouldn’t be accurate to state that the spike reported in Dr. MacDorman’s paper was the reason that we picked 2012 to start the detailed case reviews.  We started the reviews  in 2014 with the cases from 2012 because that was the most  recent complete death data available.  Dr. MacDorman’s paper was published in 2016.  We are reviewing ALL cases from that year to fully understand the numbers for 2012, the reported spike.

You are correct that I did say that “we need a tiny bit more time to give a perfect answer to that.”  when referring to our impression of the final numbers for 2012.  The final analysis may be released as a task force report or another type of publication.