Ouma Health Acquires New England Maternal-Fetal Medicine Practice

Today we are welcoming Tamara Takoudes, MD and her maternal-fetal medicine practice to Ouma Health. For decades her multisite practice has looked after high-risk pregnancies across Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, and it arrives with something you cannot buy or build quickly: standing relationships with the hospitals, imaging centers, birth centers and community obstetric practices that refer to her.

If you are an obstetrician, a midwife, or a labor and delivery nurse anywhere in New England, this is the part that matters to you. The people you already call do not change. What changes is what stands behind them.

The distance we are trying to close

American maternity care is losing infrastructure. Hospitals keep closing labor and delivery units. Maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists keep concentrating into a shrinking number of academic centers. The result is that the capacity to manage a complicated pregnancy has drifted further and further from where pregnant people actually live.

We have spent the last several years assembling the pieces to close that distance: a nationwide MFM physician group, the technology that runs it, and now established in-person practices in the communities we serve. The point is not to add another vendor to the market. It is so that a health system, a community OB practice or a health plan can plug into subspecialty capacity instead of competing to recruit it.

What this means in New England

Our national teleMFM group and physician network now sit alongside in-person care that is already rooted in the region. For a patient, that is the difference between a specialist who exists somewhere and a specialist who is reachable. For a referring clinician, it means more of the pregnancies you would have sent two hours away can be co-managed close to home.

The MFM workforce shortage is not going to resolve itself on a recruiting timeline. So we keep working with physician groups, health systems and community practices to build the clinical infrastructure that serves patients wherever they live, rather than waiting for the workforce to redistribute on its own.

Why we wanted this practice, and why Dr. Takoudes said yes

“This acquisition advances Ouma’s mission to broaden access to expert maternity care and reinforces Ouma as a destination for MFM physicians who want to pair innovation and clinical impact with sustainable, fulfilling careers,” said Sina Haeri, MD, our CEO and co-founder. “Dr. Takoudes has built a highly respected practice and enduring relationships across New England. Together, we can build on that foundation while expanding access to care across the East Coast.”

“I’ve always believed that people deserve access to maternal-fetal medicine care within their own communities whenever possible,” said Dr. Takoudes. “Joining Ouma allows us to preserve the relationships we’ve built over decades while gaining the resources and physician network to meet the changing needs of patients and referring providers. Together, we’re creating a stronger foundation for high-risk pregnancy care across New England.”

That second sentence is the whole thesis, and it is why we are not interested in acquisitions that erase what a practice already is. We will keep growing this network organically and through partnerships with physician-owned practices that want scale without giving up their local identity.

If you refer high-risk pregnancies, or you are trying to keep them local

Ouma is the nation’s largest independent maternity telemedicine company and the only one founded and led by maternal-fetal medicine physicians. We work with health plans, health systems, OB-GYN and midwifery groups, FQHCs and employers, from preconception through postpartum.

If you are a hospital, a practice or a plan wondering what subspecialty coverage could look like where you are, we would like to hear from you.