Almost half of Texas counties have nowhere to get prenatal care, let alone deliver a baby. This plan offers legislative proposals to shore up what’s left.
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Now, health care providers, advocates and local leaders are proposing similarly aggressive action to pull the rural maternity care system back from the brink. The Rural Texas Maternal Health Rescue Plan is a package of proposals they’re hoping lawmakers will champion in this upcoming session. The Texas A&M Rural and Community Health Institute convened more than 40 groups, representing rural hospitals, health care providers, medical schools, advocacy groups and nonprofits, to create this rescue plan. They’ve identified steps the Legislature could take this session, including increasing Medicaid payment rates, incentivizing health care providers to work in rural areas and improving overall women’s health care access.
“There's not a silver bullet to this. We would have done it if there was,” Banning said. “But we just want to bring forward ideas for them to think about as possible legislation or funding strategies. That's what this report is intended to do, to give them options.”Several of the top priorities focus on Medicaid, the largest payer of maternal health services in Texas. Medicaid pays for half of births statewide, but in rural areas, covers between 60% and 90% of births.
“The administrative burden of being in Medicaid is substantial,” Diana Forester, the director of health policy at Texans Care for Children, a health advocacy group, is quoted as saying in the report. “I talked to one OB group outside of Sweetwater that said they’re the only birthing unit for hundreds of miles. And they couldn’t get enrolled in Medicaid so they can’t treat Medicaid patients.”
In a legislative session focused on hot-button political issues like school choice, immigration and property taxes, the groups that put together the Rural Texas Maternal Health Rescue Plan are hoping to offer common-sense proposals that both parties can get behind, Henderson said. They’ll be pitching these plans to legislators in the lead up to the 2025 session.
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