Virtual maternity care and tele-MFM that integrates into your service line, not around it.
Schedule a conversation →Maternal care has a workforce crisis
Telemedicine obstetrics closes the gap that geography opened.
America's hospitals face a compounding shortage of Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialists. The physicians who manage the most complex pregnancies are overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of metro areas, leaving community hospitals, regional health systems, and rural facilities without the subspecialty expertise their patients need.
The result: preventable transfers, delayed diagnoses, and unsustainable reliance on expensive locum coverage that disrupts continuity of care.
Three pillars of subspecialty coverage
Tele-MFM for hospitals delivers comprehensive MFM services across three core service lines, each integrated seamlessly into your existing clinical workflows and EHR.
Built for every scale of hospital care
From multi-facility health systems to independent community hospitals, Ouma's teleMFM model adapts to your organizational complexity and patient volume.
A real medical practice, not an app or chatbot
Ouma isn't a staffing agency. We're a clinical partner that embeds into your care model and stays.
How a tele-MFM program gets stood up
Most hospitals ask two questions before anything else: how long does this take, and what does my team have to do. The answer depends more on credentialing than on technology.
Scoping and coverage design
We map your current OB volume, transfer patterns and existing subspecialty relationships, then define what coverage needs to look like. Outpatient clinic, inpatient consultation, ultrasound interpretation, or a combination. This is a conversation with your OB leadership, not a procurement exercise.
Credentialing and privileging
Usually the longest step, and the one hospitals underestimate. See the section below on how credentialing by proxy can shorten it.
Workflow and EHR integration
Our physicians work inside your systems and your order sets, so consultations, notes and imaging reads land where your team already looks for them. Integration scope is set during scoping.
Go-live and ongoing coverage
Coverage begins on an agreed schedule, whether that is clinic sessions, nights and weekends, or continuous availability. Your team keeps the patient relationship. We provide the subspecialty layer.
What credentialing actually requires
Every physician providing care at your hospital has to be credentialed and privileged through your medical staff process, and telemedicine is no exception. The part many hospitals do not realize is that Medicare's Conditions of Participation allow a shorter route.
Under 42 CFR 482.22, a hospital's governing body may rely on the credentialing and privileging decisions of a distant-site telemedicine entity rather than repeating the full process itself. The arrangement has conditions. There has to be a written agreement. The distant-site entity's credentialing standards have to meet the standards in the regulation. The physician has to hold a license recognized in your state. And your hospital has to send performance information, including any adverse events arising from the telemedicine services, back to the entity for use in its periodic appraisals.
This route is commonly called credentialing by proxy. Where a medical executive committee is willing to use it, it can remove months from a start date. Where a hospital prefers its own full process, we work through that instead.
Privileges matter beyond the start date. If your facility holds or is working toward a level-of-care designation, the criteria generally require the maternal-fetal medicine physician to hold inpatient privileges at your hospital, not simply to be reachable. More on designation requirements →
Ouma is licensed to practice in all 50 states, so state licensure is typically not the constraint. The constraint is usually your committee calendar.
What to confirm with your medical staff office
- Does the medical staff bylaws language permit reliance on a distant-site telemedicine entity under 42 CFR 482.22(a)(4)?
- When does the credentials committee next meet, and what is the submission cutoff?
- Is a written agreement with a distant-site entity already in place from another telemedicine service line?
- If we hold a level-of-care designation, what does our state require regarding MFM privileges?
42 CFR 482.22(a)(3) and (a)(4), Medicare Conditions of Participation, Medical Staff. Summarized here; confirm current text and your state's rules with counsel.
What hospitals experience with Ouma
1. Kern-Goldberger AR, Haeri S, Lindsley W, Srinivas SK. Examining ultrasound diagnostic performance improvement with utilization of maternal-fetal medicine tele-interpretation. Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM. 2021;3(5):100389. Potential missed diagnoses across 6,403 obstetric ultrasounds at 11 practices; rate was highest for cardiac anomalies.
What our partners say
Trusted by hospitals across the country
"Ouma has been an outstanding partner in our MFM program, instrumental in expanding us to 24/7 antepartum coverage while delivering seamless telehealth and high-quality, patient-centered care. Their team integrates effortlessly with ours."
Common questions about tele-MFM for hospitals
Our clinical partnerships team can walk through how tele-MFM deploys in your service line.
Talk to our team →What to compare when you evaluate a tele-MFM partner
Vendors in this category differ more than their websites suggest. These are the questions that separate them.
Who actually delivers the care. Is the clinical work done by board-certified maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists, or by generalists with subspecialty backup? Ask for the credentials of the physicians who would cover your hospital, not the company's leadership.
Whether coverage is named or pooled. A named, consistent physician team learns your protocols and your OB group. A rotating pool does not.
What happens at 2am. Coverage models range from scheduled clinic sessions to continuous availability. Match the model to when your high-risk volume actually arrives.
How imaging is handled. If ultrasound interpretation is in scope, ask which standards the reads follow and who is accountable for turnaround.
Whether the arrangement satisfies your state's designation criteria. This is the question most often skipped and the most expensive to get wrong. Requirements differ by state and by level, and some states set conditions the national framework does not. Read more →
What the cost structure is. Per-diem, per-encounter and subscription models produce very different totals at your volume. See how the coverage models compare →
Whether transfers actually fall. Ask for transfer data, and ask what the denominator is.
Let’s Talk
Bring subspecialty maternity care to your service line.
Tell us about your hospital and the coverage gap you are trying to close.
Expert maternity telehealth, extending the reach of subspecialty clinicians to every patient who needs it.