AUSTIN (Nexstar) - The state announced this week that Texas has been working with flawed data for six years on deaths of pregnant and post-natal women.
The 2012 data listed Texas as having the highest rate of maternal mortality in the country. The state charted 147 cases of women dying during pregnancy or within the first 42 days after birth.
The increase from 2010 to 2012 prompted lawmakers to create a task force and pour state dollars and other resources into solving the problem. Just last year, the task force’s life was extended after Gov. Greg Abbott added maternal mortality and morbidity to his special session call, and Senate Bill 17 made it through both chambers with bipartisan support.
Researchers with the Texas Department of State Health Services wanted to figure out why the numbers spiked in 2012.
“The majority of those deaths were not, in fact, maternal deaths,” DSHS director of communications Chris Van Deusen said. “Most of them were in women who had not been pregnant anytime recently.”
“The bottom line of what it tells us is that the maternal death rate in Texas is not as high as we thought it was,” he explained.
After spending the past year-and-a-half studying each case, DSHS found that instead of the 147 reported maternal deaths, the correct total was 56. That is less than half of the original number.
Working to find out how this miscalculation happened, DSHS announced this week that the mistake may be attributed to accidents at the computer keyboard.
“It appears that the vast majority was related to miscoding on death certificates,” Van Deusen stated. He said the year of the spike was also around the same time that the records were submitted digitally instead of on paper.
“It's like a drop-down menu,” he said. “So the ‘not pregnant in the last year’ and the ‘pregnant at time of death’ are right next to each other, and it looks like it was just mis-clicked in these handful of instances.”
“One hundred errors out of 175,000 deaths doesn't seem like a lot in the great scheme of things, however, when you're dealing with something as rare as maternal deaths, that makes a huge difference,” he said.
Lawmakers said the new revelations do not mean any lower sense of urgency to solve maternal mortality issues in the state, and around the country.
“We’re very glad to hear the number is not as high as we were told, but it’s still high,” State Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, said by phone. “We have to be very guarded and careful before we say oh let’s pump the brakes and let’s re-direct our attention elsewhere.”
“We are by no ways out of the woods or the weeds,” Thierry said. ”We need our physicians, our doctors to continue listening to women, to hear their concerns and we need women to continue to be advocates for quality and respect for maternal care.”
Brenham Republican State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst said in a statement that she believed “we as a state, can and are doing more to improve maternal health outcomes.”
Van Deusen said researchers would re-examine other years as well, to check for inconsistencies. He also said this issue does not just affect the 56 women who died of pregnancy-related complications in 2012.
“It affects many more people because of these complications [during pregnancy],” he said. “Not everyone dies but these are issues that we're still dedicated to improving. We want to make sure women have the best quality care that they can get. We want to make sure hospitals have the tools that they need to care for women. We want to make sure that people are healthier before they get pregnant.”
The increase from 2010 to 2012 prompted lawmakers to create a task force and pour state dollars and other resources into solving the problem. Just last year, the task force’s life was extended after Gov. Greg Abbott added maternal mortality and morbidity to his special session call, and Senate Bill 17 made it through both chambers with bipartisan support.
Researchers with the Texas Department of State Health Services wanted to figure out why the numbers spiked in 2012.
“The majority of those deaths were not, in fact, maternal deaths,” DSHS director of communications Chris Van Deusen said. “Most of them were in women who had not been pregnant anytime recently.”
“The bottom line of what it tells us is that the maternal death rate in Texas is not as high as we thought it was,” he explained.
After spending the past year-and-a-half studying each case, DSHS found that instead of the 147 reported maternal deaths, the correct total was 56. That is less than half of the original number.
Working to find out how this miscalculation happened, DSHS announced this week that the mistake may be attributed to accidents at the computer keyboard.
“It appears that the vast majority was related to miscoding on death certificates,” Van Deusen stated. He said the year of the spike was also around the same time that the records were submitted digitally instead of on paper.
“It's like a drop-down menu,” he said. “So the ‘not pregnant in the last year’ and the ‘pregnant at time of death’ are right next to each other, and it looks like it was just mis-clicked in these handful of instances.”
“One hundred errors out of 175,000 deaths doesn't seem like a lot in the great scheme of things, however, when you're dealing with something as rare as maternal deaths, that makes a huge difference,” he said.
Lawmakers said the new revelations do not mean any lower sense of urgency to solve maternal mortality issues in the state, and around the country.
“We’re very glad to hear the number is not as high as we were told, but it’s still high,” State Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, said by phone. “We have to be very guarded and careful before we say oh let’s pump the brakes and let’s re-direct our attention elsewhere.”
“We are by no ways out of the woods or the weeds,” Thierry said. ”We need our physicians, our doctors to continue listening to women, to hear their concerns and we need women to continue to be advocates for quality and respect for maternal care.”
Brenham Republican State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst said in a statement that she believed “we as a state, can and are doing more to improve maternal health outcomes.”
Van Deusen said researchers would re-examine other years as well, to check for inconsistencies. He also said this issue does not just affect the 56 women who died of pregnancy-related complications in 2012.
“It affects many more people because of these complications [during pregnancy],” he said. “Not everyone dies but these are issues that we're still dedicated to improving. We want to make sure women have the best quality care that they can get. We want to make sure hospitals have the tools that they need to care for women. We want to make sure that people are healthier before they get pregnant.”