Report Released on Maternity Care Deserts in America

Report Released on Maternity Care Deserts in America

Chicago
January 3, 2023
By Sabina Babel

The March of Dimes recently released the “Nowhere To Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S.” report for 2022.  A maternity care desert is defined as any county without a hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and without any obstetric providers.

Approximately 12% of births in the United States (of an estimated national rate of nearly 4 million births each year) occur in counties with limited or no access to maternity care. 

Accordingly, up to 6.9 million women and approximately 480,000 births are affected.  Of those, 146,000 babies were born in maternity care deserts, and more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age live in these deserts. Thirty-six percent of all U.S. counties are designated as maternity care deserts, a 2% increase from the 2020 Report. 

Two in three maternity care deserts are rural counties (61.5%), and only 7% of obstetric providers practice in rural counties. These numbers are alarming when correlated with the fact that approximately 900 women died of pregnancy-related causes in the U.S. in 2020, a 14.2% increase from 2019 and a 30.9% increase since 2018.  

Additionally, the number of women who experience pregnancy-related complications or severe maternal morbidity is likewise increasing, affecting an estimated 50,000 women each year.

New sections in this year’s report include Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), family practice physicians, postpartum care, chronic disease and pregnancy, and telehealth. 

Click here to view the full report.

Disclaimer: This publication is not intended to provide legal advice but to provide general information on legal matters. Transmission is not intended to create and receipt does not establish an attorney-client relationship. Readers should seek specific legal and/or medical advice before taking any action with respect to matters mentioned in this publication. The attorney responsible for this publication is Sabina Babel. This post constitutes a form of attorney advertising as defined by some state bar associations.