The number of hospitals with maternity units has been declining for years – and there is reason to fear that decline will continue in the near future.

According to a recent analysis:

• More than 700 hospitals closed their maternity units between 2010 and 2024.
• Today, nearly half of all U.S. hospitals do not have a maternity unit.
• The shortage is especially great in rural areas, where 57 percent of rural hospitals have no maternity unit.
• Maternity unit closures hit hospitals especially hard in rural Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Among the reasons for the closing of so many hospital maternity units has been the inadequacy of Medicaid payments for delivery services at a time when more than 40 percent of U.S. births are covered by Medicaid.  Now, with new limits on Medicaid eligibility in the process of being implemented nation-wide, the proportion of Medicaid-covered births could decline – and the number of unpaid deliveries could very well increase.

The prospect of reduced Medicaid eligibility is especially concerning to community safety-net hospitals because they serve higher proportions of Medicaid patients than the typical American hospital.  Should they see the number of their patients insured by Medicaid drop in the near future, they could face growing amounts of uncompensated care.

Learn more about the demise of hospital maternity units, where those units are most often closing, and the prospects for such services in the coming years from the Healthcare Dive article “Half of U.S. hospitals lack maternity wards as Medicaid cuts loom: report.”