INTRODUCTIONDespite therapeutic advances during this century and a growing perception of the safety of child birth, morbidity and mortality continue to occur in obstetric patients. More than one woman dies every minute from such causes; 585,000 women die each year. In addition to maternal death, women experience more than 50 million maternal health problems annually. As many as 300 million women-more than one quarter of all adult women living in the developing world currently suffer from short of long term illness and injuries related to pregnancy and child birth. For every maternal death, there are many serious life.1-4 Threatening complications of pregnancy. Yet relatively little attention has been given to identifying a general category of morbidity that could be called nearmisses. Stones et al were the first to use the term "near miss morbidity" to define a narrow category of morbidity encompassing "potentiality life threatening episodes". 5,6 Maternal near miss is said to have occurred when women presented with life threatening complication during pregnancy, child birth and within 42 days after delivery, but survive by chance or good institutional care. Currently maternal near-miss ratio is increasingly used to evaluate the quality of obstetric care in low income ABSTRACT Background: Maternal near miss is said to have occurred when women presented with life threatening complication during pregnancy, child birth and within 42 days after delivery, but survive by chance or good institutional care. For identifying near-miss cases five-factor scoring system was used. In 2009 WHO working group has standardized the criteria for selecting these cases. Methods: The study was conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at RIMS, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India, which is a tertiary care centre. For each case of near miss, data were collected on demographic characteristics including gestational age at the time of sustaining the near-miss morbidity, nature of obstetric complications, presence of organ-system dysfunction/failure, ICU admission and timing of near-miss event with respect to admission. Results: During the twenty-four months of the study period, 20000 deliveries at the institution and 480 women were identified as near-miss obstetrical cases by five factor scoring system. The prevalence of near-miss case in this study was 2.4%. Near-miss per 1000 delivery was 24%. Maternal death to near miss ratio was 1:7.2. The leading causes of maternal near miss were hemorrhage (42.5%) and hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (23.5%) The morbidity was high in unbooked cases. Conclusions: Maternal near miss is good alternative indicator of health care system.