Find your hospital’s C-section rate

More than med­ic­al risk factors or pa­tient pref­er­ence, the way in which a baby is de­livered de­pends largely on the hos­pit­al where the moth­er gives birth. In re­cent years, hos­pit­als have been try­ing to bring down their C-sec­tion rates, which ex­perts say are un­ne­ces­sar­ily high.

Hos­pit­als cal­cu­late how of­ten moth­ers con­sidered low-risk for the pro­ced­ure have C-sec­tions. The NTSV rate in­cludes only first-time moth­ers giv­ing birth around their due date, hav­ing a single baby that’s po­si­tioned head down, the ideal po­s­i­tion for de­liv­ery through the birth canal. In 2014, there were more than 160,000 NTSV de­liv­er­ies in Cali­for­nia, about 26% of which were C-sec­tions.