Somewhere in the U.S. right now, someone in labor is wondering how far it is to the nearest maternity ward, and whether there’s enough time to get there. For residents in maternity care deserts, the answer can be nearly three times the average for families living in full-access areas.
This is a staggering gap that sits at the center of the March of Dimes’ newly released report, Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S., of which Ob Hospitalist Group serves as the lead sponsor.
The March of Dimes report shows that maternity care access is a defining health equity and patient safety issue. Where a woman lives increasingly determines how far she must travel, whether she can receive timely prenatal care, and whether an experienced maternity clinician will be available when complications arise.
While this crisis is challenging and complex, the report emphasizes that maternity care deserts are not inevitable. Care models supported by OBHG, such as hospitalists, CNMs, and teleMFMs, can improve workforce sustainability, help hospitals preserve local services, and extend specialist expertise into underserved communities.
Here are three key takeaways from the report and how OBHG is working to address each challenge.
Despite increased awareness, maternity care deserts continue to persist
The report highlights concerning statistics: 34.6% of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts, providing no birthing facility or obstetric clinician to support essential care. That leaves over 5.8 million women and 358,000 infants living in counties with limited or no access to maternity care. The burden is particularly acute in rural America, where nearly 58% of counties have no obstetric clinician, forcing many families in maternity care deserts to travel nearly three times as far (42 vs. 14 minutes) to access care.
This forces many families to experience delays in care, or worse, forgo care altogether. This directly increases the risk of pregnancy-related mortality, unnecessary birth interventions, infant mortality, and preterm births. To maintain continuity of care, telehealth services provide a solution that keeps care close to home for many families – especially for specialist services such as maternal-fetal medicine.
The access crisis is tied directly to the workforce crisis, but models of care can make a measurable impact
This year, the report indicates that clinician availability was correlated with whether a county could provide access to care. With more clinicians retiring and fewer entering the workforce, the supply and demand problem will only continue to increase. But aside from sheer clinician numbers, workforce sustainability continues to drive accessibility. Burnout and professional isolationism in rural communities are documented drivers for lack of care. It is essential for hospitals and health systems to consider alternative models of care like OB hospitalists to provide reliable, around-the-clock obstetric coverage while supporting, rather than replacing, community physicians. Defined shifts and shared coverage can reduce unsustainable call burdens, create a better work-life balance, and allow community clinicians to focus on their practices knowing they have experienced backup in the hospital.
Rural communities face greater challenges and require more flexible solutions
At least 96 labor and delivery units closed across 35 states between 2024 and early 2026. For roughly 6 in 10 of the communities affected, it was their only birthing facility. Many of these units are located in rural and other underserved areas, with the South and Midwest most affected, with 38.7% of their counties classified as deserts, more than seven times the Northeast’s rate of 5.1%.
There is no single solution for every hospital. A large health system and a rural hospital with a small delivery volume face very different challenges, but both need a dependable way to keep care available. OBHG’s Maternal Health Access Solutions can be adapted to a hospital’s workforce, patient volume, and community needs. That may mean supplemental staffing, clinic coverage, or another tailored model that helps stabilize an at-risk labor and delivery service.
Where do we go from here?
This year’s report is not all bad news. It clearly lays out the access challenges that continue to affect communities across the country, but it also highlights where new investment is beginning to make a difference.
Across more than 300 hospitals in 42 states, OBHG works with hospitals to put collaborative workforce models into practice, supporting OB hospitalist programs, flexible staffing models for rural and underserved communities, physician and certified nurse-midwife collaborative models, and telehealth maternal-fetal medicine services. From August 2024 through July 2025, OBHG clinicians provided more than 36,000 prenatal visits and supported over 3,000 deliveries in high-need communities.
OBHG is supporting this on-the-ground work with an extended partnership with March of Dimes. Over the next two years, the two organizations will develop educational resources and bring together maternal health leaders and stakeholders around access challenges. Working to identify and implement scalable solutions, the partnership will focus specifically on the Southeast, a region the report identifies as one with significant gaps in care.