Rural hospitals train for emergency deliveries as maternity deserts expand

KANSAS (InvestigateTV) — Countless pregnant women in rural America face an urgent situation when it comes to finding a hospital to deliver their baby.

Since 2020, more than 100 facilities have stopped delivering babies, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform and March of Dimes.

As of 2024, 5.5 million women live in dangerous “maternity deserts.”

Now, a university health system is training rural hospitals to handle emergency deliveries, even if they don’t have maternity wards.

Family’s roadside delivery highlights crisis

For Danielle and Riley Redenbaugh, even after two years, the memory hasn’t gotten any easier.

“I remember I’m just, like, bawling and I was like please someone come help me,” Danielle Redenbaugh said, recalling her emotions during a 911 call.

Pregnant with her third child, Danielle Redenbaugh was no stranger to birth plans. But on an early morning in February 2024, nothing went as expected.

“It was terrifying. Like, here we are, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody around,” she said.

Danielle Redenbaugh’s water broke at 3 a.m.

“The pain just wouldn’t stop. And I was like – we have to go now,” she said.

The Redenbaughs got on the road as quickly as they could, but they live about 30 minutes from the nearest hospital with a labor and delivery unit. It was just too far.

“I pulled the car over the side of the road, ran around the front of the car and when I opened the door his whole entire head was out looking at me,” Riley Redenbaugh said.

It took medical responders 11 minutes to arrive. But the exciting moment quickly turned to panic.

“It’s not breathing,” Danielle Redenbaugh said in audio from the 911 emergency call that night.

“I was just like, ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it,’” she said.

They were able to stabilize baby Frankie, but things could have gone terribly wrong.

Rural hospitals struggle to maintain maternity services

The Redenbaughs live in what’s called a maternity desert — a county that lacks maternity care services.

“There have been a significant number of obstetric units closing in rural hospitals in recent years,” said Harold Miller, president and CEO of CHQPR.

Miller said many rural hospitals can no longer afford to offer maternity care.

It’s especially pronounced in Kansas, where only about a third of rural hospitals still deliver babies, according to CHQPR.

Miller noted that when maternity care is lost in a community, “you significantly increase the risk of problems for both the mother and the baby.”

“Wherever you show up needing care, you should be able to expect the same level of high quality care here across the state,” said Jodi Schmidt of the University of Kansas Health System.

Schmidt said they’re working to make sure rural hospitals are ready for whatever comes through their doors.

“We want people to know if you come in with a heart attack, you come in with a stroke, you’re a maternity patient presenting to a rural hospital that hasn’t delivered babies in 10 or 12 years, that the team has the best practice recommendations, has had the training, is there to meet your needs in that time,” she said.

University launches training program

The University of Kansas Health System’s patient safety organization called the Care Collaborative helps rural hospitals in Kansas stay up to date on the latest standards of care.

In fall 2025, they launched their newest program to support maternity care.

Schmidt said that it has been the “most requested” program the organization has offered.

“We got involved with the obstetrical side of things just because of the increasing loss of delivery services in a number of rural communities,” said Dr. Robert Moser, the Care Collaborative’s medical director.

Moser and his team travel to emergency rooms across the state to offer the in-person instruction.

“The fact that fewer sites are delivering, the likelihood at some point in their career they’ll have to manage the delivery will go up,” Moser said.

The training is free to dozens of hospitals across the state that have partnered with the Care Collaborative. Everyone from physicians to nurses to EMS personnel can participate.

“We really want to arm folks so we can have the best possible outcome because, as you know, maternity can be a high-risk situation,” Schmidt said.

In rural America, the lack of maternal care could be “the difference between life and death,” according to Schmidt.

Kingman Hospital is a 25-bed facility 45 miles outside Wichita. It hasn’t had a labor and delivery department since 2006.

Nursing director Marissa Gehring said they requested the training to brush up on skills that much of the staff hasn’t used in years.

“That’s really the challenge is you kind of do a little bit of everything, and you don’t have all of the capabilities that a large facility has,” Gehring said.

The four-hour training has a heavy focus on hands-on simulation. Healthcare workers learn how to assess a laboring patient and handle high-risk situations.

“Pregnant patients do come here and they need care and they need it emergently,” said Dr. Joseph Gerber of Kingman Healthcare Center.

But one day of on-site rural boot camp can only go so far.

The Care Collaborative also provides support tools, along with remote and in-person follow-up visits.

“We know from our other trainings that confidence level goes up. The retention is much better,” Moser said.

Miller said he wishes a program like this didn’t need to exist, but patients will be better off because it does.

“If the labor and delivery unit in the hospital closes, it’s a pretty safe bet that some women are still going to be coming to the hospital in labor and needing assistance,” Miller said.

Schmidt said she hopes those hospitals are equipped to provide maternal care whenever it is needed.

“We can’t continue to see more and more rural hospitals closed without an answer to: how do we continue to deliver care?” Schmidt said.

Family hopes to raise awareness

Danielle and Riley Redenbaugh said they know how lucky they are, not only to have Frankie but each other.

“Probably like a day later, he was like, Danielle, I didn’t even, like, think about the fact that you could have died,” Danielle Redenbaugh said.

They hope by sharing their story, other families might be spared that same nightmare.

“Maybe there was a bigger reason for it to happen this way so I can you know hopefully bring awareness to more people about the struggles of, you know, maternity deserts,” Danielle Redenbaugh said.

In rural America, access to care shouldn’t be a matter of luck.

In December 2025, the federal government launched a $50 billion rural health transformation program that provides funding to all 50 states. The goal is to modernize rural health care, enhance workforce sustainability and improve access to care.

Kansas partnered with the Care Collaborative to develop its plan.