Rising maternal death rates across the US may be sharply overestimated.

A new study coauthored by a researcher at Rutgers University is challenging.

The CDC is data on maternal health statistics and citing flawed record keeping for inflating the scale of the crisis, all due to the ways that data is reported and analyzed.

According to the CDC analysis, the U.S. maternal mortality rates more than tripled over the last 20 years to just over 32 deaths per 100,000 live births, far higher than any other developed nation.

But the Rutgers report shows that rate it's actually much less closer to ten deaths per 100,000 births.

Still, as senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports, troubling racial disparities persist even with an overall lower number.

For years, U.S. news outlets duly reported alarming CDC data on maternal mortality.

The latest showed almost 33% maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.

That's double even triple the rate in similar wealthy nations.

But why?

Researchers who recently reviewed CDC statistics found mistakes data collection so flawed it artificially inflated U.S. death rates.

We were actually stunned when we saw that, partly partly because the rates were so low when we did the corrections.

Maternal mortality rates in the United States is not as bad as has been previously thought.

Rutgers researcher Cande Ananth and fellow scientists took a deep dive into how the CDC gathers and compiles the U.S. maternal mortality rate.

Their report in this week's American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology highlighted some egregious errors.

For example, the deaths of 147 very elderly women.

We have found data where pregnant females aged 85 years who died being attributable to a maternal death.

Another problem they discovered fatal accidents with pregnant victims shouldn't have been logged as maternal deaths.

But a so-called pregnancy checkbox added by the CDC to U.S. death certificates in 2003 caused confusion after researchers weeded out the mistakes.

Their results cut CDC maternal death rates in half from 23.5 down to just over ten per 100,000 live births from 2018 to 2021.

Our rates, the revised rates are now very comparable and well within range of most of the data that comes from industrialized countries.

In response, the CDC admitted its pregnancy box is sometimes mistakenly checked but disagrees with the findings and accused the report of a substantial undercount of maternal mortality.

That's because there are maternal deaths occurring that would not otherwise be identified if the death certificate didn't include a pregnancy checkbox.

But an app also found even corrected data still show deep racial inequities in maternal health care.

Death rates three fold higher for blacks than whites.

Sadly, he wasn't surprised.

Structural racism is another big issue in this country that we are dealing with.

We rely a lot on qualitative data, which is the storytelling from the women in the community.

And the story that I hear from them is telling us that there is still a major problem.

Jersey advocates say the report does restructure data so it can help focus more resources on continuing health problems.

There was a section in the article that talked about pre-eclampsia and hypertensive disorders in black women, and that has been kind of our major push and fight as an organization is calling attention to that.

And so while maternal mortality is one measure, we do prefer to look at measures that provide a broader view of those birthing experience and of the overall quality and safety of their care.

In New Jersey, a maternal mortality review committee actually examines medical records in every single case.

The latest figures found 35% of maternal deaths within a year of pregnancy showed direct complications.

Dr. Kemi Alli served on the committee.

And I know in the meetings I was in that there was really in-depth discussion around that and making sure we check the box of, well, this is pregnancy is supposed to aid versus real maternal mortality.

So I think New Jersey has created a real roadmap that other states could follow.

The states also recently launched several programs designed to offer wraparound maternal health care.

I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ.

Spotlight News.