Women's use of Swedish health care during the postpartum period in relation to maternal country of birth—A population-based study

Introduction

Migrant women are a heterogenous group with both higher and lower risk for pregnancy complications and adverse birth outcomes compared with women in the receiving countries. This study aimed to investigate women's use of Swedish healthcare postpartum, in terms of hospital stay >48 h, readmission to hospital, and specialized out-patient clinic visits, in relation to maternal country of birth.

Material and Methods

A population-based register study including 278 219 primiparous and 367 776 multiparous women in Sweden (2014–2019) using data from Swedish Pregnancy Register, National Patient Register and Statistics Sweden. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to estimate associations between maternal country of birth and outcomes, adjusting for year of birth, maternal age, education, pre-gestational hypertension and diabetes, and healthcare region, presented as crude and adjusted odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) with Swedish-born women as reference.

Results

Subgroups of migrant women had higher odds of postpartum hospital stays > 48 h, particularly women from Eritrea (primiparous aOR 2.80, CI 2.49–3.15; multiparous aOR 2.78, CI 2.59–2.98), Somalia (primiparous aOR 2.61, CI 2.34–2.92; multiparous aOR 1.87, CI 1.79–1.97), and India (primiparous aOR 2.52, CI 2.14–2.97; multiparous aOR 2.61, CI 2.33–2.93), compared to Swedish-born women. Primiparous women from Afghanistan (aOR 1.32, CI 1.08–1.6), Iraq (aOR 1.30, CI 1.16–1.46), and Iran (aOR 1.23, CI 1.04–1.45) had slightly higher odds of hospital readmission, along with multiparous women from India (aOR 1.34, CI 1.02–1.76) and Somalia (aOR 1.24, CI 1.11–1.38). Specialized out-patient clinic visits were most common in primiparous women from Somalia (aOR 1.47, CI 1.35–1.59), Iran (aOR 1.31, CI 1.22–1.42) and Afghanistan (aOR 1.31, CI 1.18–1.46), and in multiparous women from Iran (aOR 1.30, CI 1.20–1.41) and Iraq (aOR 1.15, CI 1.11–1.20), however less common in women from some other countries.

Conclusions

The use of Swedish health care during the postpartum period varied among women, depending on their country of birth. Women from certain countries had particularly high odds of postpartum hospital stays exceeding 48 h, compared to Swedish-born women, regardless of parity and pre-gestational medical disorders. Further studies are needed to determine whether the individual needs of migrant women are being met during the postpartum period or not.