Summary: Childbirth is the most common reason for hospitalization. Here’s a chart from the federal Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project showing the number of hospital discharges in 2013 for various reasons. The reasons are categorized by ICD-9 code; I collected all the childbirth-related diagnoses from the top 25 discharges at the top of the spreadsheet to show just how many there are.

spreadsheet of rank order of ICD 9 CM principal diagnosis code

Jeanne Pinder  is the founder and CEO of ClearHealthCosts. She worked at The New York Times for almost 25 years as a reporter, editor and human resources executive, then volunteered for a buyout and founded...