Abstract
Background
Maternity care is characterized by more interventions and fewer uncomplicated deliveries, and everyday-clinicians should be able to follow changes in practice and in intervention- and complication-rates. The Danish Health Authorities’ wishes to make health related data more accessible to policy makers, health professionals, and the public in general. Initiatives like a Visibility Reform and the establishment of a Health Data Board (which hosts an eHealth service, where any citizen can look up hospital and health related information on aggregated levels), have been carried out. Despite easier access to register data, the eHealth service has some drawbacks. It takes certain technical skills to utilize the service optimally, and users can only access a set of pre-selected variables. We developed a database on childbirths in Denmark (MIPAC – Medicalisation in Pregnancy and Childbirth) in order to make updated and relevant information on reproductive health in Denmark easily available to users.
Method
In 2016, the Midwifery Program in Copenhagen established the MIPAC-database in Statistics Denmark. MIPAC includes all births in Denmark from 1998 and onwards and consists of data merged from several national registers on health and socio-economic factors.
Findings
Data from the first MIPAC-report (expected release date January 2019) will be presented and structured according to (1) organization of maternity care, (2) characteristics of the population, (3) interventions, and (4) birth outcomes. A thorough data cleaning process has shown that some central variables in the Medical Birth Register are utmost complex or malfunctioning. These experiences will also be touched upon.
Conclusion
We will present conclusions from the report, share experiences from working with Danish Medical Birth Register data, including concerns about the quality of core variables (e.g. cesarean section and perinatal death), and discuss how we can ensure that future Birth Statistics from MIPAC will appear relevant to colleagues in clinical practice.
Maternity care is characterized by more interventions and fewer uncomplicated deliveries, and everyday-clinicians should be able to follow changes in practice and in intervention- and complication-rates. The Danish Health Authorities’ wishes to make health related data more accessible to policy makers, health professionals, and the public in general. Initiatives like a Visibility Reform and the establishment of a Health Data Board (which hosts an eHealth service, where any citizen can look up hospital and health related information on aggregated levels), have been carried out. Despite easier access to register data, the eHealth service has some drawbacks. It takes certain technical skills to utilize the service optimally, and users can only access a set of pre-selected variables. We developed a database on childbirths in Denmark (MIPAC – Medicalisation in Pregnancy and Childbirth) in order to make updated and relevant information on reproductive health in Denmark easily available to users.
Method
In 2016, the Midwifery Program in Copenhagen established the MIPAC-database in Statistics Denmark. MIPAC includes all births in Denmark from 1998 and onwards and consists of data merged from several national registers on health and socio-economic factors.
Findings
Data from the first MIPAC-report (expected release date January 2019) will be presented and structured according to (1) organization of maternity care, (2) characteristics of the population, (3) interventions, and (4) birth outcomes. A thorough data cleaning process has shown that some central variables in the Medical Birth Register are utmost complex or malfunctioning. These experiences will also be touched upon.
Conclusion
We will present conclusions from the report, share experiences from working with Danish Medical Birth Register data, including concerns about the quality of core variables (e.g. cesarean section and perinatal death), and discuss how we can ensure that future Birth Statistics from MIPAC will appear relevant to colleagues in clinical practice.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2019 |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
| Event | The 21st Congress of the Nordic Federation of Midwives: Midwifery across borders - Harpa, Reykjavik, Iceland Duration: 2 May 2019 → 4 May 2019 https://www.njfcongress.is/ |
Conference
| Conference | The 21st Congress of the Nordic Federation of Midwives |
|---|---|
| Location | Harpa |
| Country/Territory | Iceland |
| City | Reykjavik |
| Period | 02/05/19 → 04/05/19 |
| Internet address |