US maternity wards face wave of closures as Medicaid cuts take effect | Medical help

Maternity hospitals across the United States face a wave of closures as cuts to federal Medicaid funding take effect, experts have warned.

According to an analysis by the nonprofit Protect Our Care, 52 maternity hospitals have closed their doors since HR1 was announced in July 2025, and eight more have announced they will close soon.

The bill, which will take full effect in the new year, will require many adults covered by Medicaid to meet new work requirements and be subject to more frequent eligibility checks, while there will be less federal funding for states for Medicaid.

Hospitals that have already permanently closed their maternity wards include Centra Southside Community Hospital in Virginia and St Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in rural northeast Georgia, both of which cited upcoming federal policy changes regarding Medicaid as the reason.

Experts expect to see more maternity hospital closures before and after federal changes to Medicaid take effect in the new year.

“We are deeply concerned that these changes have already and will continue to worsen an already serious crisis in maternity care,” said Erin Jones, senior director of legislative and strategic consulting at the nonprofit March of Dimes. “Reductions in funding and restrictions on how states fund Medicaid will put additional pressure on state budgets and hospitals, increasing the risk that communities will lose essential maternity services and specialty providers close to home.” »

She added that the consequences for maternity care would be particularly devastating in rural communities. The nonprofit identified 31 at-risk rural hospitals with labor and delivery services, with their eventual closure leaving 96 counties without a labor and delivery unit.

“Losing these services means fewer places to safely give birth and fewer options for pregnancies requiring specialized care,” Jones added.

In the United States, about 40% of births are financed by Medicaid, even though the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among high-income countries, with a rate of 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Benjamin Sommers, a professor of health economics at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said the changes to Medicaid would “absolutely” affect pregnant women and pregnancy organizations.

“It is not true that this law protects Medicaid for low-income pregnant women and parents. It adds financial pressure to providers and the insurance program they rely on,” he said.

Sommers, who was deputy assistant secretary for health policy under Joe Biden, said that even though the new work requirements for Medicaid are supposed to exempt pregnant women, his research has shown that many women are not enrolled in the Medicaid pregnancy pathway, meaning the state might not know they are pregnant.

He added: “Someone might be enrolled through Medicaid expansion, they might get pregnant and wrongly think — because they heard on the news that this law doesn’t affect pregnant women — (that they) are fine, and it turns out the state doesn’t know they’re pregnant and they lose coverage.” »

Vaishu Jawahar, director of policy and programs at Protect Our Care, added: “When you cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars, you cut that money from hospitals. So those hospitals fall into the red and are forced to make difficult decisions, which usually results in maternity wards closing because they are extremely expensive to run.”

Meanwhile, in early 2025, the entire CDC Pregnancy Risk Assessment Surveillance System team, which oversees a population-based surveillance system collecting data on women’s experiences before, during, and after pregnancy, was placed on administrative leave by the Trump administration.

According to an upcoming report by academics and former CDC staffers and viewed by the Guardian, these actions by the federal government have disrupted the collection and management of “one of the nation’s most important sources of demographic information on pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, postpartum experiences, and maternal and child health,” which has existed for more than four decades.

“There are no other comparable data sets. Teams like mine had access to this data before the portal closed, and so now there is no way to study the most recent trends in maternal and child health,” said Rita Hamad, professor of social epidemiology and public policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and co-author of the report.

“Now we are concerned that cuts to U.S. safety net policies or barriers that prevent people from accessing these programs could have detrimental effects on maternal and child health. »

She added: “I think we’re going to see these geographic and maternal disparities widen. Or we’re not going to see it because we don’t have the data, but that’s what’s going to happen.

The Department of Health and Human Services was contacted by the Guardian.