Clinical and Demographic Characteristics of Patient-Initiated Encounters Before the 6-Week Postpartum Visit

Objective To identify characteristics associated with a higher likelihood of patient-initiated encounters with a health care professional before the scheduled 6-week postpartum visit. Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study of postpartum persons who received prenatal care and delivered at a single academic level IV maternity care center in 2019. We determined associations between maternal sociodemographic and obstetric characteristics and the likelihood of patient-initiated early postpartum encounters with χ 2 tests for categorical variables and Wilcoxon rank sum tests for continuous and ordinal variables. Results A total of 796 patients were included in our analysis, and 324 (40.7%) initiated an early postpartum encounter. Significantly more postpartum persons who initiated early postpartum encounters were primiparous persons (54.3%) than multiparous (33.8%) persons ( P