View Policy Brief

06/2015

This policy brief describes the extent to which rural pregnant women give birth in non-local hospitals, and to analyze current patterns of non-local delivery by rural women's health insurance status and residential rurality.

Key Findings:

• In nine geographically-diverse states with substantial rural populations, 25.4% of rural pregnant women delivered their babies in non-local hospitals in 2010 and 2012.
• Rural women living in more densely populated rural areas were less likely to give birth in a non-local hospital (19.5%) than those in less densely populated rural areas, either next to a metropolitan area (35.9%) or not (33.7%).
• Privately-insured rural women were more likely to give birth in non-local hospitals than rural women who were covered by Medicaid (28.6% vs. 22.5%).
• Rural women with Medicaid coverage were more likely than privately-insured women to deliver their babies in a hospital where more than half of all births were covered by Medicaid (63.8% vs. 36.7%).

University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center

Katy Kozhimannil, Michelle Casey, Peiyin Hung, Shailendra Prasad, Ira Moscovice

Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), Hospitals and clinics, Maternal health, Private health insurance, Workforce