The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has updated its interactive tool, “Your Health System,” which reviews health-care data across all provinces and makes recommendations for the delivery of services, such as childbirth. This includes “low-risk” caesarean rates, meaning the number of low-risk women who have surgery after labouring with a single baby in their first pregnancy.
Provincial “low risk” caesarean rates are compared to the 17.9 per cent national average, including Alberta’s 20.8 per cent rate and British Columbia’s 24.5 per cent rate, which are graded “below average.” In fact, CIHI’s message to all hospitals, physicians and patients on caesarean births in general is clear: A lower rate is “desirable.”
