Monitoring Obstetric Unit Closures and Maintaining County-level Data on Hospital-based Obstetric Care

This project will add one year of data to our publicly-available dataset on obstetric care access. This project has several goals:

1. To create an annually updated database of obstetric unit closures by state and county, and to make that information publicly available to inform research, policy, and public health decisions on rural maternity care access and rural maternal health;
2. To link the closure database with additional data useful for research, public health, clinical care, and policy, and conduct timely analyses to inform decisions; and
3. To describe national, state, and county-levels changes in hospital-based obstetric care availability.

Ensuring obstetric care access and reducing maternal mortality in rural and underserved areas is a key focus of national, state, and local policies. Providing accurate and updated information on obstetric service availability in rural and urban communities is essential in fulfilling this goal.

Publications

• An Enhanced Method for Identifying Hospital-Based Obstetric Unit Status, Version 2 with Addendum
  Rural Maternal Health Data Support and Analysis Program, University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center
  Date: 10/2025
  The purpose of this methodology brief is to describe an enhanced method for identifying hospital-based obstetric unit status and for identifying closures of obstetric units. Version two of the methodology was used to identify obstetric care access in the 2010-2023 data resource.