Report: Nearly 90% of Georgia’s maternal deaths were preventable

A state legislative commission studying maternal and infant health outcomes in Georgia has released its final recommendations. 

Georgia ranks just outside the top 10 for high rates of infant mortality, the report said. One of the causes is difficulty in access to specialists. For example, there are fewer than 70 reported maternal fetal medicine doctors in the state, the report said.

In a separate report, the Georgia Department of Public Health has also found that nearly 90% of maternal deaths were preventable. New moms are dying in Georgia most often from cardiac complications, mental health and hypertension, the report said.

Gaps in the healthcare workforce are part of the problem, the commission finds. The state has over 100 vacant residency slots in family medicine, obstetrics, and pediatrics, considered core primary care specialities. Despite Georgia’s investments in graduate medical education, the state is still expected to see a shortage of specialists in OB-GYN and family medicine, as Georgia’s population is growing too fast for the physician workforce to keep up.

Laurie Ott is with the Georgia Higher Education Healthcare Initiative. She said untapped federal dollars, supplemented by the state, could help fill those slots — that’s a recommendation included in the final report. 

“It’s [a] quality and quantity problem for Georgia,” Ott said. “We don’t have enough and we don’t have enough high quality slots to keep our own graduates of our medical schools.”

That’s important because medical students who work in Georgia are far more likely to stay in Georgia.   

This story comes to The Current GA through a reporting partnership with GPB News, a non-profit newsroom covering the state of Georgia.

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