Northeast Business Group on Health and Yelp Announce Partnership to Display Maternity Care Measures for New York City and Long Island Hospitals

Globe Newswire 8-May-2019 9:00 AM

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, May 08, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northeast Business Group on Health (NEBGH), the New York-based employer-led coalition of healthcare stakeholders, and Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP), the leader in connecting people with great local businesses, today announced a partnership to add onto Yelp pages maternity care measures for the roughly 50 New York City and Long Island hospitals that provide maternity care services.

Under the partnership, NEBGH will provide Yelp with maternity care data from ExpectNY.com, a website NEBGH runs that includes publicly-available, searchable data on maternity procedures and practices at all New York City and Long Island hospitals that deliver babies. The maternity care measures that Yelp will display on the New York City and Long Island hospitals' pages are among the most important ones for expecting mothers and families to learn about and take into consideration when planning to give birth. These include:

• C-section Rate (NTSV) - The percentage of Caesarean section deliveries in "low-risk" pregnancies to mothers having their first baby.
• Breastfeeding Rate - The percentage of newborns fed only breastmilk before discharge from this facility.
• Episiotomy Rate - How often episiotomies are performed at this facility.
• VBAC Rate - How often vaginal births among women with a prior C-section occur at this facility.

"We are excited to join forces with Yelp and make this information about maternity care more widely available to expectant parents in New York City and Long Island," said Candice Sherman, Chief Executive Officer of NEBGH.  "We believe transparency of this information is vital so that expecting mothers and their families are empowered to ask questions about the plans in place for their childbirth, and understand factors that can impact their childbirth experience, their health and the health of their newborn babies."

"The wide variation in maternity care is well known with studies showing that a woman's chances of having a c-section has more to do with the hospital she chooses to deliver in than with her own medical risks, or her baby's," said Amy Sezak, vice president of communications and public relations at Yelp. "Yelp is committed to surfacing important information that is often not easily accessible to consumers, so that we can empower them to make informed decisions. By working with NEBGH to display maternity care data on Yelp, we hope expecting parents can make a more educated decision about the type of facility that best fits their childbirth preferences."

The partnership with NEBGH is the latest in a series of Yelp's initiatives to make valuable information about maternity and health care more accessible to consumers.  Yelp already shares maternity care data in California through the California Health Care Foundation, and medical data with consumers via ProPublica.

About NEBGH

NEBGH is an employer-led coalition of benefits leaders and other healthcare stakeholders with the mission of empowering members to drive excellence in health and achieve the highest value in healthcare delivery and the consumer experience. The organization provides employers with help in obtaining the most value out of each healthcare dollar they spend and provides guidance in managing high-cost employee conditions through multi-stakeholder projects, publications and educational programming. NEBGH makes employers' voices heard in efforts to transform healthcare, including playing a key role in New York State's State Innovation Model project on primary care.

About Yelp Inc.

Yelp Inc. (www.yelp.com) connects people with great local businesses. With unmatched local business information, photos and review content, Yelp provides a platform for consumers to discover, interact and transact with local businesses of all sizes. Yelp was founded in San Francisco in July 2004.

Media contact:
Jennifer Fucci
Northeast Business Group on Health
jfucci@nebgh.org
212.252.7440, ext. 229