The Birth Survey

If you have had a baby in the last three years click here to participated in the the MOST AWESOME SURVEY EVER!

It is called The Transparency in Maternity Care Project and is sponsored by the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS). The purpose is to provide women with "accurate, objective data in order to make fully informed choices about birth settings and providers", and to give practitioners and hospital administrators the data they need to evaluate whether they are delivering quality care. When it is finished the hope is that a woman could look up her doctor/hospital and read reviews on the care provided, see c-section rates, and intervention rates, etc... Women would be able to find doctors/midwives that matched their ideology and needs.

I am SO excited that this is FINALLY getting done. It was my dream as a public health graduate to do something like this. I've heard rumors that there are efforts to do this sort of thing for ALL types of medicine. So that say you needed a knee replacement, you could look up the hospital/doctor and see their success rate, compare prices, methods, etc... How AWESOME would that be. It would be one step towards changing health care in America-- but I won't get started on that one!

So PLEASE if you've had a baby recently take the time to participate in the survey. Your voice will make a difference. I've heard that there has been a HUGE response to this survey-- in fact I think the server crashed once because so many people were trying to get on. I think this just goes to show that women WANT to have have their voices heard, and that they are eager to see CHANGE!