Biden unveils a game-changing plan for improving maternal care in the U.S.

The U.S. continues to face a maternal mortality crisis. Death rates for mothers in the U.S. are more than double those of most other developed and high-income countries, at 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. In recent years, hospitals across the U.S. have been closing or cutting back on unprofitable obstetrics wards. Things have only worsened since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Some states, such as Idaho, are now closing labor and delivery units as OB-GYNs flee and hospitals and medical centers find they can’t recruit new ones amid restrictive abortion bans that threaten doctors with fines and prison time for providing women with necessary (and potentially life-saving) maternal care.

Amid this crisis, the Biden administration has announced the first-ever federal maternal health and safety requirements for hospitals, which would require the medical industry to invest billions of dollars into improving maternal care.

 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the two new programs earlier this week, which will cover about 40% of U.S. patients:

• Hospitals will be required to keep basic resuscitation equipment available in labor and delivery rooms, document maternal health training for staff, and have written policies for transferring patients to other facilities.
• All hospitals that offer emergency services will be required to have protocols and supplies for emergency deliveries — even if they don’t have an obstetrics unit.

Hospitals that fail to follow the new requirements could be kicked off the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

“President Biden and I are fully committed to addressing a maternal health crisis,” Vice President Kamala Harris said. She also noted in her remarks that the crisis disproportionately affects Black women, Native women and women in rural communities. Studies show that Black women are three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications, regardless of their income or education level. For women in rural communities, the risk is around 60% higher.

Dr. Sujatha Reddy, who is an OB-GYN in Atlanta, said the proposal is a way of strong-arming hospitals into doing more for maternal health care.

“They’re threatening being kicked off of Medicaid and Medicare, which is crucial. It’s estimated that 40% of Americans are on Medicaid or Medicare together if you add them up, so it’s not feasible that a hospital would want to be kicked off the program,” Reddy tells 11Alive.

“Women’s health is absolutely an issue in this election, and I think in bringing this out now – it may be partly election politics but for me I think we need to focus on the fact of why minority women are dying during childbirth,” Reddy continued.

Hospitals are already pushing back on the new mandates, but that’s likely due to the cost. The CMS estimates it will cost the medical industry about $4.46 billion over 10 years to implement both programs — or about $70,671 per hospital per year. Patient advocates, on the other hand, say this is a step in the right direction.

“There are other requirements that are already in conditions of participation, and in large part, we don’t see large numbers of hospitals being kicked out of the program,” Ben Anderson, deputy senior director of health policy at patient advocacy group Families USA, told Axios.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said in a release that the proposal includes new requirements for maternal quality improvement, including standards for the organization, staffing, and delivery of care within all obstetrical units.

“For too long, too many women in the United States have been dying during pregnancy or in the postpartum period, and this crisis has disproportionately affected women of color,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in the CMS release. “HHS is taking additional steps to improve maternal health by strengthening the care new moms and their babies receive at our nation’s hospitals. The Biden-Harris Administration continues to be committed to making pregnancy and childbirth safer.”