For Rural & Critical Access Hospitals

Best-in-nation expertise helping you keep birth local.

When a rural labor and delivery unit closes, pregnant patients drive hours or land in an ER that was never set up for them. Ouma exists to keep that from happening: board-certified MFM coverage, specialist ultrasound reads, and staff training that make your maternity service sustainable.

Contact us →Explore federal rural funding →

The spoke, not the hub ↓Services for rural facilities ↓Federal funding ↓FAQ ↓

90.3%¹of U.S. counties with reported preterm birth data have no practicing MFM physician

56%¹higher likelihood of above-average preterm birth in counties without an MFM

35%²of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts

1 in 6³births occur in rural facilities, while nearly all MFMs practice in urban centers

1Greiner AL, Haeri S, Nidey NL. “Preterm Births and Maternal-Fetal Medicine Physician Workforce Location in the United States.” Am J Perinatol, 2025. Of 2,981 U.S. counties with reported preterm birth data, 90.3% had no practicing MFM physician; those counties had about 56% higher odds of a preterm birth rate above the national average (unadjusted OR 1.56; 95% CI 1.22 to 1.99). PubMed

2March of Dimes. “Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S.” 2024. About 35% of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts.

3SMFM Special Statement on rural and underserved MFM access, via Contemporary OB/GYN, 2026: nearly all MFM subspecialists practice in urban centers, even though more than 1 in 6 births occur in rural facilities.

The problem

The economics were never built for you

Running labor and delivery means intensive nurse staffing, round-the-clock anesthesia coverage, and high liability, against a payer mix that leans heavily on Medicaid. The math strains even well-run rural hospitals, and unit after unit has closed under it.

The national maternity companies rarely look your way. Small hospitals lack the volume that justifies their programs and the budgets that pay for them. The result is a tier of American hospitals left to fend for themselves.

Closure does not end the need. It moves it: to two-hour drives, to your emergency department, and to worse outcomes for the families who stay.

Tell us what coverage you are missing →

As local units close, the only options move further from home

Local L&D

Closed

Local ER

Not built for birth

Regional L&D

90 min

MFM center

2.5 hr

Delivery hospital

3+ hr

Illustrative: nearer to home, on the left, the maternity unit has closed and only an ER remains, so every real delivery option now sits hours away.

Our positioning

We are the spoke, not the hub

Big health systems build hub-and-spoke networks that pull your high-risk patients, and their deliveries, into the mothership. Ouma is built the opposite way. We are independent and physician-led, with no health system to feed.

We come to you, train your sonographers and staff to work at the MFM level, and help you keep every pregnancy that can safely stay local. Even one retained delivery matters to your OB, your midwife, your staff, and your bottom line.

Ouma is the neutral party that will do best by our clients and our patients.

Patients stay local

Deliveries kept in your community whenever it is clinically safe.

Your staff, upskilled

We train your sonographers and teams to work at the MFM level.

No system loyalty, no leakage

Independent of every health system, so your volume stays yours.

What we do

Start with the coverage you are missing

TeleMFM clinic days

A recurring MFM clinic, sized to your volume. Programs often start as a half day every other week and grow into weekly clinics as referrals stay local.

Learn more →

Ultrasound reads + sonographer training

Specialist reads to AIUM, SMFM, ACOG, and ISUOG standards, plus hands-on training that turns your sonographer into an MFM-capable scanner.

Learn more →

Inpatient & after-hours coverage

MFM guidance for your ER and inpatient teams when a complicated pregnancy presents at 2 a.m., so patients are stabilized and kept or transferred on clinical merit, not guesswork.

Remote patient monitoring & diabetes guidance

Your family medicine physicians already manage diabetes well. We add the maternity-specific layer and connected monitoring where it helps.

Monitoring →Diabetes →

Low lift to launch

No carts. No capital line item.

Launches on standard consumer hardware in the rooms you already use.
Works with the ultrasound machines and EHR you have today.
Dedicated physician team, not a rotating locum pool.
Predictable program cost instead of $3,500 to $5,000+ per locum day.

Case story

From every other week to every week

Critical access hospital · isolated rural region

A critical access hospital hours from the nearest MFM, serving a geographically isolated area between three reservations, asked Ouma for MFM consults and ultrasound reads so patients could stop driving three hours each way.

Ouma trained the hospital's sole sonographer and opened a half-day clinic every other week. Within a year it became a full clinic day every week, and that sonographer now scans at a level with the best in Ouma's network.

We have figured out how to run a financially viable program in Medicaid while providing a concierge level of care to those members.

Sina Haeri, MD, MHSA

Co-founder & CEO, Ouma Health

Federal tailwind

$50B in Rural Health Transformation funding is on the table

The Rural Health Transformation Program is moving $10B per year into exactly this problem. Ouma's Medicaid-proven maternity programs fit the funding's intent: access restored without building a department from scratch.

See the funding guide →

$50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program: $10 billion a year to states, fiscal 2026 through 2030

Public Law 119-21, Sec. 71401; CMS, Rural Health Transformation Program.

Frequently asked

Questions from rural hospitals

Tell us your coverage gap and our team will size a program to it.

Talk to our team →

We have no MFM within three hours. Can this actually work?

Yes. MFM is a cognitive specialty, which is why it translates so well to telehealth. Your patients are seen locally while our physicians manage the subspecialty layer.

Will Ouma pull our patients to a bigger hospital?

No. We are independent of every health system. Our model is built to keep care, and deliveries, at your facility whenever clinically safe.

What equipment do we need to buy?

In most programs, none. We work with your existing rooms, ultrasound machines, and EHR.

Can you train our sonographer?

Yes, and we consider it core to the model. Rural programs regularly grow because a local sonographer learns to scan at the MFM level.

How do transfers work when they are truly needed?

We help you transfer on clinical merit with complete documentation, and fewer than 10% of Ouma-managed patients require in-person transfer.

How quickly can a program launch?

Discovery to first clinic day typically runs weeks, not quarters, because nothing is built or installed.

From Ouma Answers

Where telemedicine counts for a level-of-care designation

The short answer

National guidance allows maternal-fetal medicine availability to be met by telemedicine at some levels. Several states do not. The difference decides what counts.

Read the full answer →

Medically reviewed by Sina Haeri, MD, MHSA

Let’s Talk

Keep maternity care local.

Tell us where your coverage gaps are and we will show you how the model closes them.

Get in Touch →Learn How It Works

Expert maternity telehealth, extending the reach of subspecialty clinicians to every patient who needs it.