Ontario Stillbirth Database

Health Status 2000

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Ontario Stillbirth Databases - Data Sources

Data Source

Information on stillbirths is collected by the Office of the Registrar General and is based on three forms: 1) the Statement of Stillbirth completed by parents, 2) the Physician Notice of Birth or Stillbirth (PNOB) completed by the physician, and 3) the more detailed Medical Certificate of Stillbirth completed by the physician. Statistics Canada edits the data. The Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit receives the data from the Public Health Branch, Ministry of Health, through its Health Planning System (HELPS) initiative.

Three forms must be completed (all three forms are merged together to create the stillbirth database):

Form 1 - "Notice of Live Birth or Stillbirth", which is completed by the attending physician or nurse. This form is sent to the Division Registrar of Births and the duplicate copy is sent to the Ontario Ministry of Health.

Form 7 - "Statement of Stillbirth", is completed by the parent/guardian and sent to the municipality in which the stillbirth occurred.

Form 8 - "Medical Certificate of Stillbirth", is completed by the parent/guardian and must be received by the municipality before a burial permit is issued.

Data Limitations

Records received after the "cut-off date" may not be included. These generally represent stillbirths occurring outside the province.

All available data (1981 to 1995) are presented in the report. There is generaly a two year lag period before the database is available. When a new year's data set is received, the report will be updated.

Residence coding problems exist, particularly within metropolitan areas composed of multiple census subdivision (CSD's). For this reason, analysis is only conducted at the census division level (County level).

The number of stillbirths may be under-counted.

Because of data quality concerns, 1991 data should not be used.

Data should be analyzed by the residence of the mother, not by where the stillbirth occurred.

Out-of-province stillbirths occurring to Ontario women were not included in HELPS until a 1999 re-release of data to add out-of-province stillbirths from 1981 to 1992 to make stillbirths consistent with other vital statistics data. Out-of-province stillbirths are not included in data from 1993 onwards. The exclusions particularly affect areas bordering Quebec and Manitoba. For consistent comparisons over time, exclude all out-of-province stillbirths for both local and provincial analysis.

Stillbirths are included in a separate database in HELPS, but are combined with live births in the Provincial Health Planning Database (PHPD).

HELPS provides the ICD-9 classification of the cause of stillbirth but this variable is not provided in the PHPD.

Rates and proportions based on counts less than 5 must be suppressed.

Reference: Ontario Stillbirth Database, HELPS, Ontario Ministry of Health, [1999].