Hospitals delivering babies down to 30 in Arkansas

The number of Arkansas hospitals that will be providing labor and delivery services has fallen to 30 after the announcement July 24 that National Park Medical Center in Hot Springs is closing its unit at the end of this month, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.

The change followed the unexpected death of Dr. Pitt Moore, the hospital’s only obstetrician-gynecologist.

Women in only 22 of the state’s 75 counties can receive services at hospitals located in their home counties. Ten Arkansas hospitals have closed their obstetrics units since 2019, ACHI reports on its website. Sixty percent of the state’s rural hospitals do not offer labor and delivery services.

Of the 10 hospitals that have closed their units since 2019, five did so because of staffing shortages and five for financial reasons.

Other recent labor and delivery unit closures include Baptist Health-Fort Smith, which closed its unit April 28, and Ouachita County Medical Center in Camden, which closed its unit in January.

A recent report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform found that since the end of 2020, 146 rural hospitals nationwide have closed their units or announced they are doing so by the end of the year. The number represents a 14% reduction in rural units over that time period.

That report said six rural Arkansas hospitals have closed their labor and delivery units since 2020, a number equalling 27% of the state’s total rural units. Seven rural hospitals in Arkansas are in danger of closing theirs. That number equals 44% of the remaining hospitals.

Meanwhile, the median number of minutes Arkansas mothers traveled to delivery facilities was 16 in 2024, ACHI estimates.

The numbers varied widely based on county of residence – from two in Union County, home of South Arkansas Regional Hospital in El Dorado, to 84 in Searcy County in rural north-central Arkansas.

In Phillips County, the median number of minutes increased from six in 2019 to 48 in 2024 after the Helena Regional Medical Center’s labor and delivery unit closed in 2020. The year before, the hospital delivered 69% of the county’s births. Likewise, Ashley County median travel times increased from 16 in 2022 to 48 in 2024 after the Ashley County Medical Center closed its labor and delivery unit in 2023.

ACHI reported that the percentage of Arkansas mothers traveling at least 30 minutes increased from 26% in 2019 to 29% in 2024. The percentage traveling at least 60 minutes rose from 7% to 8% over that time period.

Southeastern Arkansas travel times increased from 24 to 39 minutes over that time period, while southwestern Arkansas times rose from 27 to 37 minutes.

In contrast, northwest Arkansas residents traveled 13 minutes, while central Arkansas residents traveled 14. Northeast Arkansas residents traveled 24 minutes.

ACHI derived its information for in-state births from Arkansas Department of Health birth records. It used the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative’s All-Payer Claims Database for out-of-state births. It estimated travel times using mothers’ zip codes and the addresses of delivery facilities.

ACHI has found that Medicaid paid for 47% of the state’s births, ranging from 29% in Benton County to 79% in Hempstead County.

Arkansas had one of the nation’s highest maternal mortality rates at 38.3 per 100,000 live births from 2018 to 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national rate was 23.2 per 100,000 live births. California had the lowest rate at 10.5, while Tennessee had the highest at 41.1. Mississippi’s rate was 39.1.

During that timespan, 69 Arkansas women died while pregnant or within 42 days of the pregnancy’s end from causes related to the pregnancy.

The CDC warns that the numbers should be interpreted cautiously because the data in many states are based on such small numbers that they are statistically unreliable. Eleven states and the District of Columbia were not rated. The health policy organization suppressed rates based on fewer than 20 deaths because of their unreliability. Also, state variation could be based on differences in state maternal mortality data quality.

Arkansas also had the nation’s second highest infant mortality rate in 2023 at 8.2 per 1,000 births, behind only Mississippi with 8.9, KFF reports on its website. Vermont was not rated because of insufficient data with less than 20 deaths.

Infants were defined as children under age one year.

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