Improving Pregnancy Outcomes Through Better Prenatal Care Data and Metrics

Despite the critical importance of prenatal care for the prevention of maternal morbidity in the United States, relatively few resources are dedicated to improving its quality. This omission is driven in part by an absence of detailed prenatal care data: global insurance payments, the dispersion of services across multiple care settings, and a focus on more costly inpatient care delivery have limited our ability to measure and improve prenatal care quality. The upcoming unbundling of prenatal care billing in January 2027 and the changing Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requirements for digital quality measures present an important opportunity to improve insights into prenatal care delivery and associated outcomes. In this manuscript, we identify limitations in current prenatal care metrics and data sources (eg, electronic health record data and insurance claims) that must be addressed. We provide a framework to ensure that prenatal care metrics and associated data yield actionable insights to improve health outcomes and the patient experience of care.