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One quarter of Ohio counties lack OB/GYN physicians
YOUNGSTOWN
Some 4.8 million women in Ohio are served by only 1,158 obstetrics and gynecology physicians, leaving women in certain areas of the state without easy access to maternal care.
“One quarter of Ohio’s counties lack OB/GYN physicians. This is unacceptable,” said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, D-Ohio, during a telephone press conference last week with reporters during which he discussed bipartisan legislation he co-sponsored, “Improving Access to Maternity Care Act.”
He said the bill would reduce OB/GYN shortages in rural and other underserved areas and ensure women have access to timely, high-quality maternity care.
Brown was joined in the discussion by Susan Greene, a certified nurse midwife from Cleveland.
The most-vulnerable child-bearing women in this state are those who struggle to access health-care services, said Greene, who has 30 years’ experience working with underserved populations in the Cleveland area.
According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, babies born to mothers who received no prenatal care are three times more likely to be have low birth weight, and five times more likely to die than babies whose mothers received care, Brown said.
In 2012, Ohio ranked worst in the nation for black infant mortality and 48th in the nation across all births. That same year, 1,047 Ohio babies died before their first birthday. One way to combat the problem is to have maternity health care readily available, the senator said.
The “Improving Access to Maternity Care Act,” introduced by U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., would reduce OB/GYN shortages by directing the Health Resources and Services Administration to identify and designate maternity-care shortage areas that may be used by the National Health Service Corps.
“This new designation is critical to facilitating a better understanding of where maternity-care shortages are located and to subsequently direct health-care providers to those communities,” Brown said.
The bill is endorsed by ACOG and the American College of Nurse-Midwives.
Brown said the first step to improving birth outcomes is to identify the areas most in need of OB/GYNs and then provide incentives through the National Health Service Corps, which exchanges medical scholarships for practicing in underserved areas.
“We need to ensure that mothers and mothers-to-be have access to the timely, high-quality maternity care they need,” he said. “That is what this bill would do ... allow placement of maternity-care resources where they’re most needed and help ensure healthier pregnancies, healthier mothers and healthier babies.”