DPH advisory subcommittee begins work on maternal-care report card, debates dashboard format and data gaps

The Department of Public Health’s advisory subcommittee met to begin designing a legislatively required maternity-care report card and to decide how the public product should look and function. Dr. Linda Berry, chair of the subcommittee and a professor at Yukon School of Medicine, opened the meeting and asked members to help define the committee’s scope and two expected deliverables.

A DPH representative described the statute that created the committee and the work plan, saying the group must establish metrics, measures and methodology to inform an annual public product. The representative noted the statutory schedule: an initial submission tied to a February 1 deadline, a July 1 framework milestone and a Jan. 1 deadline for a public-facing report or dashboard, with updates every three years.

The meeting’s central debate was whether the statute’s "report card" should be interpreted as a static public snapshot or as a more resource-intensive interactive dashboard. "I perceive a dashboard as something dynamic that you can query," Dr. Linda Berry said. "A report card is static — it’s like your school report: an overview with assessment to date." A DPH representative emphasized that the statute does not prescribe a specific format but that legislative intent communicated to staff favored a public-facing product that residents could use.

Attorney Jennifer Cox, who said she had been involved in drafting the bill, advised the group that the statute reads like a static report but can inform tools that work in tandem with dynamic systems. "There will be a public report that’s gotta meet all of the appropriate privacy requirements," she said, stressing that privacy and data-sharing constraints would shape what could be published.

Members pushed for the committee to center patient experience, not only administrative measures. Dr. Martas and other participants argued qualitative work — focus groups, structured interviews and community-led input — will be needed to capture why patients return to emergency care or how they experience care. "What they’re missing is the voice of the patient," one participant said; another asked DPH to be clear about what data hospitals already collect and what the task force must add.

DPH staff said they have assembled a baseline list of available data (including morbidity/mortality reports, CMS quality measures, vital records, Medicaid claims and other state reports) and will share those materials with the subcommittee. Members raised practical limits: several DPH speakers cautioned that some measures (for example, maternal mortality and infant mortality) are reported only at the state level because case counts are small and that other data may be subject to data-sharing agreements or privacy limits. "Some of the data we collect is not really able to be broken down at the hospital level," said a DPH staff member.

The subcommittee agreed on homework and next steps: members should review the DPH-provided inventory and the suggested metrics before the next meeting; DPH staff said they would circulate the documents and a plain-language memo clarifying statutory intent and administrative guardrails. DPH staff also asked that resource links be sent to a central health-equity email rather than to the full membership to avoid inbox overload and accidental broad distribution.

On process, Dr. Berry proposed basic etiquette and a motion to outline meeting rules (use of chat, hand-raising and roundtable follow-ups). The motion was seconded, discussed and the chair indicated a formal vote on etiquette was not necessary. At the end of the scheduled agenda a member moved to adjourn; the chair solicited objections and the meeting concluded with plans for continued work between meetings.

Next steps: DPH will distribute the dataset inventory and a written summary of statutory intent; members will familiarize themselves with potential source datasets (CDC LOCATE tool, Medicaid claims, CT vital records, health information exchange feeds, MMRC and CMS measures) and identify gaps they believe require qualitative collection. The subcommittee will reconvene with that preparatory work to recommend which metrics and methodology should be used in the public product.