NEWS

Brown supports bill to reduce OB-GYN shortages

Jessie Balmert

Ohio women suffer from a shortage of maternal care with only 1,158 OB-GYNs working in a state of nearly 5 million women.

No OB-GYN physicians are practicing in 26 counties — more than one-fourth of the state, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists data. The state average is 2.4 OB-GYNs per 10,000 women compared to the national average of 2.65 OB-GYNs per 10,000 women.

Bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would help improve access to OB-GYNs by directing the Health Resources and Services Administration to identify maternity care shortage areas. Then, National Health Service Corps clinicians would be sent to those areas most in need, according to a Brown news release.

The National Health Service Corps was created in 1972 to send physicians to under-served areas. The program provides scholarships, loan repayment and a living stipend for physicians who participate for at least two years. Currently, more than 9,200 are serving 9.7 million Americans.

These physicians are sent to areas with shortages in primary, dental and mental health care, but there is no designation for areas with limited maternal health care. The proposed legislation, also sponsored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, would change that.

“We need to know more about areas of the country where there is a shortage of maternity care providers,” said Jesse Bushman, director of advocacy and government affairs with The American College of Nurse-Midwives.

The lack of OB-GYN physicians is fueled by retirements and fears about high malpractice premiums, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found. There has been no notable increase in the number of OB-GYNs trained since 1980 even though the population of women nationwide has increased by 26 percent and access to health care has grown through the Affordable Care Act.

Over the next decade, an estimated 15,000 OB-GYNs will retire, outpacing the rate of new OB-GYNs entering the workforce. The number of new certified nurse-midwives and certified midwives doubled from 287 in 2007 and to 576 in 2014, Bushman said. However, that growth will not offset the losses in OB-GYNs.

That shortage of OB-GYNs is a problem in Ohio, which ranks 48th in the nation for infant mortality and last in African-American infant mortality. In 2012, 1,047 infants died statewide — a rate of 7.57 per 1,000 births. The rate was 6.37 deaths per 1,000 births among white infants and 13.93 deaths per 1,000 births among black infants, according to the most recent Ohio Department of Health records.

Better access to maternal health care could reduce the number of deaths. Babies born to mothers who received no prenatal care were three times more likely to have a low birth weight and five times more likely to die than babies whose mothers received care, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“Healthy pregnancies lead to healthy babies, and no mother-to-be should go without the care she needs,” Brown said in the release. “That’s why it’s so alarming that more than one million babies are born to mothers who did not receive adequate prenatal care each year.”

jbalmert@gannett.com

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Twitter: @jbalmert