Speakers at the public‑testimony portion of the hearing urged the city to press state officials to share detailed incident data and to expand supports for families affected by pregnancy‑related deaths.

Patricia Loughman, a certified nurse‑midwife and former director of midwifery at Harlem Hospital, told the committees that the New York City Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) has reviewed nearly 400 deaths since 2018 and needs access to the New York Patient Occurrence Reporting and Tracking System — known as NIPORTs — to fully investigate and recommend systemwide improvements.

“NIPORTs is a statewide mandatory reporting system that collects information … about adverse events,” Loughman said. She told the council the registry contains root‑cause analysis categories — for example, staffing levels, time of day and communication failures — that are not always apparent in chart reviews and that access to those coded reports “is critical to the New York City MMRC’s understanding of hospital deaths.”

Bruce McIntyre, a bereaved father who said his partner died in April, described difficulties he faced after the death of the child’s mother, including delayed access to a birth certificate and gaps in post‑mortem communication. He urged lawmakers to support proposed measures such as a Grieving Families Act and to pursue truth‑and‑reconciliation mechanisms and greater accountability from hospitals.

Several organizational witnesses backed the council’s proposed resolutions calling for better reporting and tracking of maternal adverse events. Evie Grelier of VNS Health, which runs nurse‑home‑visiting programs, highlighted the Bronx Nurse Family Partnership and said strong home visiting must pair with improved data and coordination. Beth McGovern of the Greater New York Hospital Association and Judith Cutchen of the New York State Nurses Association both told the committees that more timely, detailed data and stronger staffing and culturally sensitive care are essential to reduce preventable deaths.

Community advocates also urged concrete service expansions. The Community Service Society recommended automatic postpartum blood‑pressure cuffs at discharge and scheduled home visits for Medicaid patients after birth; the organization noted that cardiovascular conditions are a leading cause of postpartum death for some groups and that remote monitoring can reduce emergency visits.

Multiple witnesses — including union representatives from 1199 SEIU and community‑based mental‑health programs — urged continued funding for midwifery, doula referrals and perinatal mental‑health services and called for the council to protect public hospitals from federal funding cuts that could force service reductions.

What the speakers asked for: direct access for the city‑level MMRC to NIPORTs incident reports, clearer procedures for family notification and hospital accountability after maternal deaths, expansion of midwifery and doula capacity, more perinatal mental‑health workers and broader use of home visiting and postpartum remote monitoring.

The testimonies made clear that community groups, clinicians and families want stronger statutory or administrative levers to ensure the data and supports the MMRC and local advocates say are necessary to prevent further maternal deaths.