Immediate Postpartum Long-Acting Reversible Contraception Programs in Texas Hospitals Following Changes to Medicaid...

Provision of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) after delivery and prior to discharge is safe and advantageous, yet few Texas hospitals offer this service. Our study describes experiences of Texas hospitals that implemented immediate postpartum LARC (IPLARC) programs, in order to inform the development of other IPLARC programs and guide future research on system-level barriers to broader adoption.

Eight Texas hospitals that had implemented an IPLARC program were identified, and six agreed to participate in the study. Interviews with 19 key hospital staff covered (1) factors that led the development of an IPLARC program; (2) billing, pharmacy, and administrative operations related to implementation; (3) patient demand and readiness; (4) the consent process; (5) staff training; and (6) hospital plans for monitoring and evaluation of IPLARC services.

Most hospitals in this study primarily served Medicaid and un- or under-insured populations. Participants from all six hospitals perceived high levels of patient demand for IPLARC and provider interest in providing this service. The major challenges were related to financing IPLARC programs. Participants from half of the hospitals reported that leadership had concerns about financial viability of providing IPLARC. The hospitals with the longest-running IPLARC programs were safety net hospitals with family planning training programs.

We found that hospitals with IPLARC programs all had strong support from both providers and hospital leadership and had funding sources to offset costs that were not reimbursed. Strategies to reduce the financial risks related to IPLARC provision could provide the impetus for new programs to launch and support their sustainability.