Kessner Index Criteria: Assessing Adequacy of Prenatal Care

A commonly employed system for measuring prenatal care adequacy is the index of Kessner and colleagues (1973). As shown in the Table, this Kessner Index incorporates three items from the birth certificate: length of gestation, timing of the first prenatal visit, and number of visits. It does not, however, measure the quality of care, nor does it consider the relative risk of complications for the mother. Still, the index remains a useful measure of prenatal care adequacy. Using this index, the National Center for Health Statistics concluded that 12 percent of American women who were delivered in 2000 received inadequate prenatal care (Martin and associates, 2002). 

Adequate Prenatal Care
Initial visit in first trimester and:
Weeks		Attended Prenatal Visits
17	and	2 or more
18–21	and	3 or more
22–25	and	4 or more
26–29	and	5 or more
30–31	and	6 or more
32–33	and	7 or more
34–35	and	8 or more
36 or more	and	9 or more
Inadequate Prenatal Care
Initial visit in third trimester or:
Weeks		Attended Prenatal Visits
17–21	and	None
22–29	and	1 or fewer
30–31	and	2 or fewer
32–33	and	3 or fewer
34 or more	and	4 or fewer
Intermediate Care
All other combinations

Referensi:
Williams Obstetrics 23rd Edition (McGraw-Hill) 2009

Tags: Lecture Notes