The effect of rural hospital closures on maternal and infant health

To evaluate the effect of rural hospital closures on infant and maternal health outcomes.

We used restricted National Vital Statistics System birth and linked birth and infant death data, merged with county-level hospital closures from the Sheps Center for the period 2005-2019.

We used difference-in-difference and event study methods, employing new estimators that account for staggered treatment timing. Our key outcome variables were prenatal care initiation; birth outcomes (<2500 g; <1500 g; <37 weeks; <28 weeks; 5-min Apgar); delivery outcomes (cesarean, induction, hospital birth); and infant death (<1 year of birth; <=30 days of birth; <=7 days of birth; <= 1 day after birth).

The analysis covered all births in the United States in rural counties (by rurality: all, most, moderately rural).

We found evidence that fewer individuals delivered in their county of residence after a hospital closure, and this was most pronounced for residents of the most rural counties (29%-52% decline (p < 0.01) in the likelihood of delivering in their residence county). We found that hospital closures worsen prenatal, infant, and delivery outcomes for residents of moderately rural counties but improve those outcomes for those in the most rural counties. In moderately rural counties, low birth weight births increased by 10.4% (p < 0.01). We found suggestive evidence of decreased infant deaths in the most rural counties. This pattern of findings is consistent with closures leading residents of the most rural counties to seek care in a different county and residents of moderately rural counties to seek care at a different hospital in the same county.

Loss of hospital care has meaningful effects on the rural populations; investigating rural counties in aggregate may miss nuanced differences in the effects on the margin of rurality.