PROVIDENCE – Southcoast Hospital System, which includes Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford and Tobey Hospital in Wareham, made U.S. News and World Report’s inaugural list of most vital hospitals for maternity care access in the nation.
No Rhode Island hospitals were recognized this year in the publication's 2024 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care released Tuesday. U.S. News evaluated hospitals from across the nation that provide labor and delivery services and submitted detailed data to the publication for analysis; 680 hospitals, an all-time high, participated in this year’s survey.
Only three hospitals in the area are listed as overall high performing, all in Massachusetts. They are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. Southcoast Hospital System was listed as high performing in last year’s survey.
The overall study is based entirely on objective measures of quality, such as C-section rates in lower-risk pregnancies, newborn complication rates, exclusive breast milk feeding rates and early elective delivery rates, among others. New this year, researchers also considered episiotomy rates, vaginal birth after cesarean [VBAC] rates, and whether each hospital met new federal criteria for “birthing-friendly” practices and used methodology which rewarded hospitals that tracked and reported their outcomes for patients of different races and ethnicities.
New this year was a special recognition of 73 hospitals across the U.S., including the Southcoast Hospital System, which serve communities that depend on them for access to vital maternity care services.
These hospitals were identified in communities that would become maternity care deserts if the only maternity hospital serving them stopped providing that crucial service. On average, Maternity Care Access Hospitals are 15 miles further from the closest hospital providing maternity services than hospitals that did not receive the best of designation, and they are located in counties that have less than half the number of obstetric providers per 10,000 births than other hospitals.
"While growing maternity care deserts in parts of the country have left millions of people without local access to maternity care, these U.S. News-recognized Maternity Care Access Hospitals persist in providing this vital service to under-resourced communities,” said Dr. Jennifer Winston, health data scientist at U.S. News.
