Florida Cesarean Rates by Hospital, 2008

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Hospital Name	Total Cesareans	Total Deliveries	2008 Rate
Statewide Total Cesarean Rate	84,994	222,645	38.2%
Kendall Regional Medical Center	1,439	2,020	71.2%
South Miami Hospital, Inc	2,457	4,153	59.2%
Mercy Hospital	787	1,372	57.4%
Holy Cross Hospital, Inc.	631	1,162	54.3%
Hialeah Hospital	855	1,614	53.0%
Glades General Hospital	284	560	50.7%
Mount Sinai Medical Center	955	1,933	49.4%
Baptist Hospital of Miami	2,200	4,505	48.8%
Memorial Hospital Miramar	1,506	3,113	48.4%
Jackson Memorial Hospital	2,637	5,524	47.7%
Homestead Hospital	707	1,491	47.4%
Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital	270	571	47.3%
Palmetto General Hospital	967	2,061	46.9%
Plantation General Hospital	1,466	3,139	46.7%
Lawnwood Regional Medical Center	513	1,162	44.1%
Saint Mary’s Medical Center	1,695	3,872	43.8%
Palms West Hospital	440	1,011	43.5%
North Shore Medical Center	840	1,938	43.3%
Baptist Medical Center - Nassau	179	415	43.1%
Boca Raton Community Hospital	735	1,721	42.7%
Brandon Regional Hospital	1,445	3,396	42.6%
Sarasota Memorial Hospital	1,363	3,266	41.7%
Pasco Regional Medical Center	130	313	41.5%
Healthpark Medical Center	1,568	3,801	41.3%
Arnold Palmer Medical Center	5,851	14,217	41.2%
Broward General Medical Center	1,430	3,476	41.1%
Florida Hospital	1,102	2,693	40.9%
St Joseph’s Hospital	2,869	7,018	40.9%
West Boca Medical Center	864	2,129	40.6%
Physicians Regional Med Ctr- Collier Blvd	161	397	40.6%
Jupiter Medical Center	482	1,192	40.4%
Memorial Regional Hospital	1,680	4,159	40.4%
Northwest Medical Center	719	1,813	39.7%
Memorial Hospital Jacksonville	841	2,137	39.4%
University Community Hospital	1,070	2,726	39.3%
Memorial Hospital West	1,784	4,553	39.2%
Bayfront Medical Center, Inc	1,286	3,302	38.9%
Spring Hill Regional Hospital	705	1,815	38.8%
Fort Walton Beach Medical Center	433	1,116	38.8%
Saint Vincent’s Medical Center	769	1,999	38.5%
Bethesda Memorial Hospital	1,147	2,983	38.5%
St Luke’s Hospital	391	1,019	38.4%
NCH Healthcare System North Naples	1,352	3,530	38.3%
Wellington Regional Medical Center	954	2,494	38.3%
Mease Countryside Hospital	707	1,852	38.2%
Winter Park Memorial Hospital	871	2,289	38.1%
Leesburg Regional Medical Center	528	1,392	37.9%
Community Hospital	317	840	37.7%
Shands Hospital at the Univ. of Florida	1,041	2,766	37.6%
Desoto Memorial Hospital	210	560	37.5%
Halifax Health Medical Center	900	2,404	37.4%
Baptist Medical Center	877	2,394	36.6%
Florida Hospital Waterman	329	904	36.4%
Coral Springs Medical Center	841	2,311	36.4%
Mayo Clinic	154	424	36.3%
Florida Hospital Zephyrhills, Inc	200	551	36.3%
Peace River Regional Medical Center	485	1,337	36.3%
Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center	360	998	36.1%
Indian River Medical Center	440	1,223	36.0%
Bay Medical Center	177	496	35.7%
Jackson North Medical Center	600	1,687	35.6%
Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center	385	1,085	35.5%
Florida Hospital Celebration Health	548	1,561	35.1%
Jackson South Community Hospital	518	1,488	34.8%
Florida Hospital Heartland Medical Center	360	1,038	34.7%
Baptist Medical Center South	533	1,537	34.7%
Lower Keys Medical Center	172	499	34.5%
Manatee Memorial Hospital	743	2,159	34.4%
Cape Coral Hospital	493	1,444	34.1%
Health Central	403	1,181	34.1%
Cape Canaveral Hospital	231	677	34.1%
Parrish Medical Center	221	648	34.1%
Florida Hospital Altamonte	411	1,208	34.0%
Baptist Medical Center - Beaches	401	1,191	33.7%
Santa Rosa Medical Center	110	328	33.5%
South Lake Hospital	187	565	33.1%
Gulf Coast Medical Center	766	2,331	32.9%
Shands at Lake Shore	215	658	32.7%
Holmes Regional Medical Center	897	2,747	32.7%
Capital Regional Medical Center	316	970	32.6%
Highlands Regional Medical Center	121	372	32.5%
West Florida Hospital	143	441	32.4%
St Petersburg General Hospital	479	1,512	31.7%
Tampa General Hospital	1,752	5,554	31.5%
Saint Lucie Medical Center	307	977	31.4%
Osceola Regional Medical Center	683	2,183	31.3%
Sacred Heart Hospital	1,132	3,652	31.0%
Jackson Hospital	190	617	30.8%
Wuesthoff Medical Center - Melbourne	145	471	30.8%
Regency Medical Center	586	1,909	30.7%
Orange Park Medical Center	670	2,184	30.7%
Lakewood Ranch Medical Center	304	995	30.6%
Central Florida Regional Hospital	210	691	30.4%
Putnam Community Medical Center	150	502	29.9%
Citrus Memorial Hospital	193	647	29.8%
Sacred Heart Hospital - Emerald Coast	195	655	29.8%
Shands at AGH	334	1,123	29.7%
Flagler Hospital	325	1,113	29.2%
South Seminole Hospital	431	1,491	28.9%
Tallahassee Memorial Hospital	1,188	4,144	28.7%
Morton Plant Hospital	949	3,317	28.6%
Gulf Coast Hospital	593	2,085	28.4%
Martin Memorial Medical Center	582	2,104	27.7%
North Florida Regional Medical Center	649	2,377	27.3%
Good Samaritan Medical Center	170	623	27.3%
Florida Hospital Deland	286	1,051	27.2%
Baptist Hospital Inc	301	1,108	27.2%
Lakeland Regional Medical Center	974	3,602	27.0%
North Okaloosa Medical Center	167	620	26.9%
Wuesthoff Medical Center-Rockledge	188	705	26.7%
South Florida Baptist Hospital	136	511	26.6%
Munroe Regional Medical Center	747	2,878	26.0%
Shands Jacksonville Medical Center	736	3,473	21.2%
Seven Rivers Regional Medical Center	64	320	20.0%

Source: http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov/

Comments

[Monkey Mama]

Sick, isn't it? Especially when you look at the state's baby factory Arnold Palmer with over 14,000 births a year.

Sick.

[Liz Chalmers]

At the very least, Kendall should be had for misleading advertising:

"The new, state-of-the-art maternity unit in The Atrium at Kendall Medical Center features LDRP Maternity Suites, where labor, delivery and postpartum recovery all take place within one comfortably furnished room. "

If 71.2% are having c-sections, and presumably some of the remaining 38.8% are delivering in the OR with forceps/vacuum/etc, they can hardly claim that labor, delivery, and postpartum recovery typically take place in a single room (unless they are pioneering LSDRP suites--Labor, Surgical Delivery, Recovery, Postpartum suites....)

[NavelgazingMidwife]

I was reading the numbers and, in an odd reaction, I didn't register the actual percentages in front of my eyes. 70%? It seems fake. If only that were true.

I grew up in Orlando, was a doula and midwife's assistant there. In one of the birth centers I worked in, they had a cesarean rate about 18%. To think that Florida Hospital in Orlando has a 40% cesarean rate makes my stomach turn.

These are the first 2008 rates I've seen and it terrifies me to think what we're going to see from around the rest of the country - and what 2009's numbers will bring us.

My head is swimming. My knees are weak. I don't even know where to begin to fix this.

[SaanenMother]

Can any Floridian midwives or Mommas speculate about birth center and home birth rates? Is there any glimmer of hope in relation to birth center births alongside these cruddy rates?

[MomTFH]

The hospital at which I will be doing rotations, the hospital where I was born, the hospital where my older son was born, and my closest ob/gyn residency site are on that list. The lowest rate for those four is 43.3%. The other three are above 46%.

As for the out of hospital birth rate, I am not sure what it is for South Florida. I would assume somewhere around 5%.

[michele]

OMG... will the c/s rate ever stop climbing? Or are we aiming for 100%?

[KK]

This is so disturbing. How can that be? How awful for women, and how expensive! It seems like a low-risk woman in Florida had better deliver at home.

[Jill]

Florida hospitals should be hanging their heads in shame.

[Monkey Mama]

There's a lot of speculation that it has to do with the "three strikes you're out" law in Florida for practicing physicians. The biggest part of the "problem" with the law is that it supposedly covers groups and individuals just the same, so if a group of 50 docs have 3 judgments against them, all of the docs under their umbrella will be out of a license or if one solo doc has three judgments, he'll lose his license. I'm not an attorney so I can't really speak too much about the truth behind the statement, but I can say that I've heard it out of more than one practitioner's mouth.

Sucks, sucks, sucks that I was one of those 84,994 in 2008.

The bright (?) side of it all is that more and more women are option for OOH births and midwives in Florida have some amazing laws that protect them and preserve their rights to be paid by insurance companies--even out of state policies that forbid OOH birth. My TN policy that specifically excluded midwifery care of all kinds and OOH birth paid over $2000 toward my midwife bill, even if I did have to harass them to no end to get the $$ I was owed.

[MomTFH]

That was my main reason for choosing a midwife with my first child. I lived closest to Baptist Hospital of Miami (48.8%), and when I got pregnant, there was a demonstration outside of the hospital because their cesarean rate had crossed 50% the previous year. (This was in 1998).

[Elita @ Blacktating]

I gave birth at one of the hospitals listed above that has a 47% C-section rate. When I asked my OBGYN what the C-section rate was there he said he didn't know but that it was "probably low" because it was a small community hospital. Boy was he wrong! (for the record, I liked him, he was very open to the way that I wanted my pregnancy & birth to go, even if it was the total opposite of the majority of his patients.) Unfortunately I ended up with a different doctor from the practice at my actual labor who was pushing me to get a c-section before she even showed up for the hospital. I had a healthy pregnancy with zero complications, I arrived at the hospital nearly 7 cm dilated, and had no drugs. The reason she wanted to section me? I was at 42 weeks and sonogram showed my baby was "huge." Two hours and a few pushes later, I had an 8 lb pound. Every woman I know who had a baby at a hospital in Florida in the last few years except for ONE ended up with a c-section.

[Jill]

Elita,

"Probably low." Even nice people can have their heads buried in the sand. It's probably a self-preservation thing... who really wants to fess up to a near 50% cesarean rate. o_O

Can you believe that if you had trusted what that second doc had said, you would have had completely unnecessary surgery? Unbelievable.

[Kitty]

That's just plain unreal to me. I'm an L&D nurse at a large county hospital- over 60% of our births are high risk and we have a 20% rate. No elective sections allowed. No early inductions for no reason allowed. It makes me feel ill to think of how surgery-happy places are. It's an outrage. That needs healthcare reform- a low risk pregnancy delivered by a midwife is so much cheaper than a section.

[Melanie]

Did you ever think that the c-section percentages at some of the hospitals are higher because they have neonatal units that aren't locally offered at other hospitals?? This fact alone would make the average of a hospital with a NICU a lot higher over another hospital that doesn't.

Anyone that has ever taken a statistics course knows that you can skew statistics to look however you need them to.

[Karla]

Yes, Kitty, but one of the lowest rates is Shands Jacksonville--affiliated with UF and the high risk level III NICU for the area. So, although one might expect a higher c-section rate there for a variety of reasons (more high risk, more indigent, teaching hospital), it's actually one of the lowest in the State. (21%)

[Marni]

These numbers are sickening. I am in early pregnancy and have to move to Miami soon for my job. Provided my pregnancy goes smoothly and is low risk, I am thinking about staying with family out of state during my last month and delivering there where most hospitals have a C-section rate of under 20 percent. The only other option is a Midwife. I am not handing myself and my baby over to a bunch of overzealous butchers.

Miami OBs, hospitals, and the medical schools and residency programs teaching these doctors should all be hanging their heads in shame. Kendall, in particular, with over a 70 percent rate should be shut down immediately and the OBs should lose their licenses. I don't see how this is not medical malpractice.