As services for pregnant women in New Mexico begin to disappear, risks increase

Maternal health crisis in New Mexico: Women and babies are in danger because basic services are not available

CLOVIS – Victoria Robledo was two months pregnant last June when the only women’s health clinic in this eastern New Mexico town closed its doors.

Hers was a complicated pregnancy that demanded specialized care, and Robledo, 24, soon found herself driving long distances – 100 miles to Lubbock, Texas, for her first ultrasound, 220 miles to Albuquerque for a test that revealed the umbilical cord was in a knot.

She was terrified she would lose the baby. At 36 weeks she lost prenatal care services and was so desperate for care that she met with Clovis Mayor Mike Morris. “I can’t get the help my baby needs,” she told him.

“I never really understood how dire the need is until I experienced it myself,” said Robledo, who divides her time working as a receptionist, a maternal health activist and the mother of a preschooler and a toddler.

Pregnant women all across New Mexico are facing similar dilemmas. In the last decade, six hospitals around the state have closed their maternity wards and at least three clinics have been forced to close or severely reduce operations, due to financial stress, staff shortages or other causes.

The closures have left women without critical maternal care, putting untold numbers of mothers and infants at risk. Between 2015 and 2018, 77 women died during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth. Some of these deaths were directly related to complications from the pregnancy, such as hemorrhages; others were caused by things like mental health or substance use disorder issues that weren’t properly treated during the pregnancy and after.

The New Mexico Maternal Mortality Review Committee concluded about 80% of these deaths were preventable.

Racial and income disparities within these statistics are sobering. Over a 10-year period, Black women, who represent only 3% of the state population, died at a rate four times higher than all New Mexico women during and after childbirth. In more recent years, women on Medicaid died at a rate five times higher than women on private insurance, statistics show. Native American women were two times more likely to experience severe health complications or near deaths than white women during birth, according to an analysis of hospital data obtained by Searchlight New Mexico.

Three hospitals – University of New Mexico Hospital, Presbyterian Hospital and Lovelace Women’s Hospital – are equipped to take the most complex pregnancies, and only UNMH is qualified to take both preterm and critically-ill newborns. All are in Albuquerque, a three-hour drive or more from many parts of the state.

“If the closest labor and delivery hospital is three hours away from you, you are in danger. If the labor and delivery unit that is close to you is dysfunctional and underfunded, you are in trouble,” said Sunshine Muse, executive director of Black Health New Mexico, an organization working to erase health disparities. “We can’t just depend on the big cities to have access to care. We have to make sure access is statewide.”

National problem

An estimated 1,205 American women died in 2021 of complications arising from pregnancy or childbirth, a 40 percent jump from 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

In New Mexico, pandemic numbers have not been fully analyzed, but health officials acknowledge the state is following the same trend.

“When it comes to the state, there is a lack of connection with the communities,” said Nicole Martin, co-founder of Indigenous Women Rising, a reproductive rights organization that advocates for Native American women.

She and others point to a host of contributing factors. Among them: low reimbursement rates for Medicaid in a state where 65% of deliveries fall under its coverage; severe provider shortages across almost every medical specialty, resulting in “maternal health deserts”; bureaucratic barriers that make it difficult for midwives and doulas to provide services; and difficulty recruiting obstetricians and gynecologists in the state’s rural areas, where a third of the population lives.

New Mexico has attempted to address the crisis. Last year, it expanded Medicaid for women for up to a year after birth.

Nevertheless, New Mexico’s lack of progress was demonstrably on display last year when the CDC denied funding to help improve the state’s obstetric care. The agency believed that the state lacked the infrastructure and staff necessary to make effective use of the money, according to the New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative, a nonprofit contracted by the state to improve maternal health care.

Pandemic arrives

State officials and providers all agree the last few years disrupted the maternal health care system. To free up needed beds for COVID-19 patients, hospitals across New Mexico reduced non-emergency services, which forced women to delay prenatal care.

Two hospitals – Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital in Gallup and Alta Vista Regional Hospital in Las Vegas – permanently closed their maternity wards in 2022. Other hospitals that shuttered their maternity wards over the past decade included Artesia General Hospital, Dr. Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital in Tucumcari, Union County General Hospital in Clayton and Lovelace Westside Hospital in Albuquerque.

Dr. Gillian Burkhardt, NMPC’s board president and medical director of labor and delivery for the University of New Mexico Hospital, said pregnant women are frequently transferred to UNM Hospital with untreated health problems due to limited or unavailable care in rural communities.

Indeed, one in every three women statewide – and about one of every two Indigenous women – went without prenatal care during their first trimester, according to a 2021 survey by the New Mexico Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System.

Geographic disparities have deepened as women increasingly travel hours for something so basic as an ultrasound. With only three hospitals equipped to treat the most complex pregnancies, transportation is one of the biggest barriers affecting women in remote areas.

Culture clash

Many women of color say they feel culturally misunderstood and left out of decision-making. As an example, a doula told Searchlight about a woman who, in the early stages of labor, drove herself from a remote area in the Navajo Nation all the way to a hospital in Albuquerque just to reach a provider who made her feel cared for.

“They are literally looking for a provider [who] they can feel they can trust and feel safe with,” said Navajo Breastfeeding Coalition Director Amanda Singer, who provided doula services to the woman.

Racial and ethnic disparities are not unique to New Mexico: They have contributed to worsening maternal health outcomes everywhere around the country. But here, the problem is complicated by the fact that the state and its contractor, the NMPC, have failed to analyze data in a timely manner. So, there’s limited information about whether current efforts are working.

In 2018, New Mexico joined the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, a nationwide initiative that helps states improve their data analysis, establish metrics to improve obstetric care and build infrastructure to reduce maternal and infant deaths and injuries.

Leading medical organizations have recognized this program – which has been introduced in every U.S. state – as an effective approach to reduce infant mortality and maternal deaths and injuries inside hospitals.

When New Mexico joined the Alliance, it identified three areas for immediate attention: obstetric hemorrhages, hypertension, and care for pregnant and postpartum women with substance use disorders. The state contracted with the NMPC to develop improvements.

Few have occurred. Instead, the rate of women who experienced severe maternal morbidity increased from 76.12 per 10,000 hospital deliveries in 2018 to 97.75 in 2020, a Searchlight analysis found.

Burkhardt, the NMPC president, told Searchlight the pandemic has made it challenging to develop improvements. In addition, she said, there has not been enough funding to build the necessary infrastructure so metrics can be analyzed and hospitals get timely recommendations.

To Muse, this is passing the buck: The NMPC promised to do a job and has failed, she said. “… I think that the Perinatal Collaborative’s failure to create the results that New Mexico so desperately needs is because they don’t have the disciplinary or cultural or regional diversity that’s needed to do this.”

Hoping for best

At 36 weeks, when prenatal visits typically become more frequent in order to screen for signs of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and infections, Victoria Robledo found she was losing access to health care. Until then, she had received prenatal care services at the Plains Regional Medical Center; suddenly, she said, she was informed that she couldn’t be seen again until she went into labor.

Without a provider, Robledo said her only option was to hope for the best. Twice she went to the local emergency room, thinking she was in labor.

At 40 weeks and a day, her labor was induced and she gave birth without complications. She was struck by how adorable her 7-pound 13-ounce healthy baby was. She held him, and for the first time in months a wave of relief washed over her.

“I don’t have to worry about any complications anymore. He’s a lot better taken care of on the outside then he is on the inside,” she remembered thinking.

Searchlight New Mexico is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative reporting in New Mexico. Read this story in its entirety or other Searchlight stories at searchlightnm.com

In New Mexico in 2019, 132 infants died before reaching their first birthday, resulting in a mortality rate of 5.7 per 1,000 live births. Black newborns died at a rate four times higher than white newborns; Native American and Hispanic newborns died at a rate roughly 1.5 times higher, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.