5 signs your women’s service line needs MFM support

Key takeaways

• MFM access is becoming essential as high-risk pregnancies rise and specialist availability remains limited.
• Virtual MFM helps close care gaps by giving local teams remote access to specialty expertise for consultations, care planning and transfer decisions.
• Strengthening MFM support can help facilities retain appropriate patients, expand women’s health services and improve access to care closer to home.
  
  

Increasingly complex pregnancies, an uneven distribution of specialists and continued gaps in maternity care access are making it harder for facilities to provide the specialized care high-risk patients need. And as facilities look to strengthen their women’s service lines, access to maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) expertise is becoming increasingly important.

With the rise of high-risk pregnancies creating greater demand for specialized care, it’s not a question of if MFM support is needed, but how facilities can ensure they have access to it when their patients need it most.

Virtual MFM can help bridge that gap by giving facilities access to MFM specialists who can support high-risk patients, extend the capabilities of local care teams and strengthen women’s health services. 

Here are five signs it’s time to consider additional MFM support, and five solutions on how virtual MFM can help.

1. High-risk patients are leaving your system for specialty care

If your OB patients are regularly referred to another health system for MFM consultations or delivery, it’s a sign your service line has a gap. When an MFM specialist isn’t available locally, patients often travel hours to receive the specialized care they need, which creates significant barriers to timely, high-risk pregnancy care.

The solution: Virtual MFM allows facilities to connect with specialists remotely, so they can manage high-risk patients while reserving transfers to those who need higher levels of care. The goal isn’t to prevent every transfer, but to ensure transfers happen when patients need higher levels of care — not because the expertise isn’t available. 

2. Your OB team is managing increasingly complex pregnancies

The need for specialized pregnancy care is growing. With prepregnancy obesity in women on the rise and women over 35 accounting for nearly 19% of U.S. pregnancies, complications such as hypertension, diabetes and preeclampsia are more common. These conditions increase both the complexity of pregnancies and the need for specialized care.  But amid workforce shortages, access to MFM expertise has remained limited, leaving nearly half of U.S. counties without obstetric care.

The solution: If your OB team is managing more complex cases, virtual MFM support can give clinicians direct access to specialists for consultations, care planning and guidance on high-risk pregnancies. This added expertise can help your local team make informed care decisions and determine when a patient can safely remain in your community or requires a higher level of care. 

3. Your patients are traveling long distances to seek care

Where a patient lives shouldn’t determine their access specialized pregnancy care, yet geography remains a significant barrier. More than 35% of U.S. counties are classified as maternal deserts, meaning they have no birthing facility or obstetric clinician. For patients in these communities, access to MFM may require significant travel, creating additional barriers to timely care.

The solution: Virtual MFM care can bring specialty expertise to the patient instead of requiring them to travel long distances to reach needed treatment. By connecting patients and their local care teams with MFM specialists virtually, facilities can provide consultations and ongoing specialty support closer to home.

4. Recruitment challenges are affecting your operations

As more than 400 maternity units shutter across the country, healthcare facilities in maternal care deserts are struggling to attract the MFM physicians they need. Limited talent availability and growing competition among health systems are widening gaps in access to high-risk pregnancy care.

The solution: With shortages frequently cited as the primary reason hospitals scale back obstetric services, especially in rural areas, virtual MFM can provide an immediate way to connect your team with specialty expertise — while locums MFM coverage can provide on-site support when needed. 

5. You want to grow your maternal and neonatal services

If you’re looking to grow your women’s service line or strengthen your NICU, you have to consider whether you have the specialty infrastructure to do so. MFM plays an important role in caring for complex and high-risk pregnancies, but access to these specialists remains limited. In some states, there is less than one MFM physician for every 700,000 residents.

The solution: Expanding access with virtual MFM expertise can help your health system support a broader range of high-risk pregnancies and keep appropriate patients within your system. For those looking to grow their services, virtual MFM can be one way to extend specialty expertise and expand the population you can serve. 

Ready to strengthen your women’s service line and get patients to the care they need? Connect with us to learn how virtual MFM support can help expand care to your communities.