A new report by the CHQPR shows that fewer than 41% of US Rural hospitals still provide Maternal Health services, down 5% since 2020. An additional 13% are in danger of closure (127 rural hospital maternal health units). For rural mothers, this means no local maternal healthcare and a more than 30-minute drive for labor and delivery care.

According to the report, “the US has one of the highest rates of mortality for both infants and mothers among the world’s advanced economies. Pregnant women are more likely to die in the US than in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and most other developed countries. Moreover, Black women in the US are 2-3 times as likely to die for pregnancy-related causes as other racial and ethnic subgroups. Over 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable with appropriate prenatal, labor & delivery, and post-partum care.”

The report recommends Remote Specialty Support for Rural Maternity Care Teams. Physicians, midwives, and nurses will be better able and hopefully more willing to deliver obstetric care in rural areas if they have access to remote support from maternal-fetal medicine specialists and from staff who have had experience addressing rare complications.

When third-world African countries (like Rwanda) are implementing US technologies to support Remote Maternal Specialty Support teams, why are US rural health systems so slow to adopt these innovations? The answer is bureaucracy, funding and inertia. Inexpensive telemedicine platforms, such as Hippo Virtual Care, are available from US companies for $3,600 annually that can quickly connect rural hospital maternal care teams with the remote specialty physician support they need. Using this technology, the US government could provide every rural hospital with remote maternal health support for less than $18M ($10M install and $8M annual cost).

Hippo Technologies provides a cloud-based system that is easy to acquire, easy to install, easy to adopt and easy to scale. Most locations can implement Hippo Virtual Care in less than two weeks, requiring just 30 minutes of training. Avoiding just six complex maternal cases per hospital annually (~$27,000 additional cost per case according to the NIH) can save ~$162,000 per hospital and $372M nationally – a 4,500% ROI on an $8M investment.

The answer is amazingly easy and inexpensive, compared to the terrible price that rural mothers are paying for the loss of local maternal health.

For further information or to schedule a demo, contact Tom Fee: tom.fee@myhippo.life