More than half of the counties in Nevada are considered maternal health care deserts
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) joined Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and her colleagues in releasing draft legislation to address the rising trend of labor and delivery unit closures in rural and underserved hospitals.
“Expectant moms in rural Nevada deserve access to quality health care—including essential labor and delivery services,” said Senator Cortez Masto. “Our draft legislation would work to ensure hospitals in rural and underserved areas across the country continue providing critical maternity care to moms. I will keep fighting to get Nevada families the support they need to keep themselves and their children healthy.”
In Nevada, more than half of the counties do not have a birthing hospital. Only four out of 14 rural hospitals offer routine labor and delivery statewide. In Nye County, the largest geographic county in Nevada, there isn’t a single hospital that offers obstetric care or OB-GYNs. In Elko County, there are more than 53,000 Nevadans, but only 5 practicing OB-GYNs in 2022. Between 2012 and 2022, approximately one quarter of all rural hospitals stopped providing obstetrics services, impacting 267 communities. This trend of closures is caused by several overlapping challenges, including the high fixed operating costs of these units, low volumes of births, and difficulties in attracting and retaining OB-trained clinical staff, all of which is made worse by inadequate reimbursement for labor and delivery services.
Specifically, the Keep Obstetrics Local Act would:
- Increase Medicaid payment rates for labor and delivery services at eligible hospitals in rural and high-need urban areas;
- Provide “standby” payments to cover the costs of staffing and maintaining an obstetrics unit at low-volume hospitals;
- Create low-volume payment adjustments for labor and delivery services at hospitals with low birth volumes;
- Require all states to provide postpartum coverage for women in Medicaid for 12 months, among other steps; and
- Ensure that hospitals use these additional resources to invest in the maternal health care needs of the local communities they serve.
This draft bill has been endorsed by the American College of Nurse-Midwives, America’s Essential Hospitals, Catholic Hospital Association, Community Catalyst, Families USA, National Partnership for Women & Families, and the National Rural Health Association, among others.
A summary and section by section of the draft legislation is here and legislative text is here.
Senator Cortez Masto is a leader in the Senate in ensuring Nevadans can access quality, affordable health care — including lifesaving emergency services in rural communities. She leads the bipartisan legislation to extend and increase Medicare payments for emergency ambulances in rural and urban communities. Last year, Cortez Masto passed a law to make sure ambulance providers are adequately reimbursed for providing critical services. She has pushed the Administration to protect the Medicare Advantage program, which provides quality health care to millions of seniors and individuals with disabilities across the U.S. She has cosponsored legislation to make health care more affordable by giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices, capping drug costs, and limiting egregious price hikes by drug manufacturers. She is also working across the aisle to extend Medicare enrollees’ access to telehealth services no matter where they reside. She is currently pushing legislation to save moms’ lives and address the drivers of maternal mortality, morbidity, and health disparities in the United States.
###