Understanding Postpartum Hospital Use Among Birthing People With Medicaid Insurance

Individuals with Medicaid insurance are more likely to have pregnancy-related complications than individuals with private insurance, but previous research has not described postpartum hospital use in the population of patients with Medicaid. Using Medicaid claims data, we analyzed time to the first instance of postpartum hospital use during the postpartum year using Kaplan-Meier curves and described causes of postpartum hospital use at different postpartum windows. Among 1,626,056 birthing individuals, 20.7% had postpartum hospital use at 1 year postpartum. We found a higher proportion of postpartum hospital use after the typical 30-day postpartum analysis window than within the initial 30 days postpartum, with causes of postpartum hospital use shifting away from delivery-related causes over time. This highlights the need to better understand postpartum hospital use in the population of patients with Medicaid insurance, because 40% of births in the United States occur in this population.