San Francisco Birth Statistics

This is a re-posting of information shared by midwife, Michelle Welborn.

“This data is from the SF Department of Vital Statistics and is collected from the birth certificate. This is mandatory reporting. It covers the 2008 calendar year.

A VBAC RATE OF 1.3% means 1.3% of all the births at that institution were VBACs. they do not track successful VBAC rates vs attempted VBAC rates. “

CPMC (California Pacific Medical Center)
6110 births
30.9% total cesarean rate
1.8% forceps
7.6% vacuum
1.3% VBAC
58.5% spontaneous vaginal births

Kaiser SF
2648 births
31.7% total cesarean rate
no forceps
2.7% vacuum
.9% VBAC
64.7% spontaneous vaginal births

SFGH (SF General Hospital)
1318 births
20.67% total cesarean rate
1.1% forceps
3.6% vacuum
72.8 spontaneous vaginal births
1.9% VBAC

St. Luke’s
916 births
20.5% total cesarean rate
.4% forceps
3.4% vacuum
75.7% spontaneous vaginal births
.1% VBAC

UCSF
1919 births
27.0% total cesarean rate
4.3% forceps
3.1% vacuum
64% spontaneous vaginal births
1.7% VBAC

Homebirths – Nearly all of these are low risk so we are not exactly comparing apples to apples but this is fascinating none the less.
168 total births (A little over 1% of the total births in SF)
3% cesarean rate
97% spontaneous vaginal births
2.4% VBAC