2023-110: California Department of Public Health

CALIFORNIA STATE AUDITOR Report 2023-110 | February 2024 Table 1 The Time It Takes to Register a Fetal Death Has Generally Increased in Recent Years YEAR AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS MEDIAN NUMBER OF DAYS 2017 21.77 ██████████████████████ 13.36 ██████████████ 2018 23.96 ████████████████████████ 13.47 ██████████████ 2019 22.50 ███████████████████████ 13.63 ██████████████ 2020 25.94 ██████████████████████████ 15.41 ████████████████ 2021 31.24 ████████████████████████████████ 18.70 ███████████████████ 2022 30.05 ██████████████████████████████ 18.51 ███████████████████ Total 25.86 ██████████████████████████ 14.52 ███████████████ STATE LAW ALLOWS 8 DAYS 8.00 ████████ 8.00 ████████ FOR THE ENTIRE PROCESS Source: CDPH’s Fetal Death Registration System and state law. Note: We also examined unattended fetal deaths and found that about one percent, or 181 of all fetal deaths statewide from 2017 through 2022, were likely unattended. According to CDPH’s data, registering unattended fetal deaths at the local registration districts took an average of 44 days. We determined a fetal death was likely unattended by a physician at delivery, based on the location where the fetal death occurred as recorded in FDRS data, such as in a vehicle.