New dashboard reveals widening rural divide in access to Virginia maternity care

VIRGINIA, USA — Mothers living in rural Virginia areas travel an average of 30 minutes longer and 23 miles farther to give birth at a hospital than mothers in urban communities, according to a new statewide dashboard. Virginia Health Information (VHI) launched its Distance to Delivery dashboard in August. The interactive tool analyzes Virginia hospital birth records from 2019 through 2024 to examine how geography affects access to childbirth services. More in Health "You don't have to go far, say, to Mathews County, where you're jumping from eight minutes, to 50 minutes, to an hour," VHI CEO Kyle Russell said. Approximately one in 10 mothers included in the dashboard lived in a rural community. "The distance traveled is increasing over time statewide, and that's particularly burdensome in rural areas of the state," Russell said. The dashboard estimates the travel time and distance between a mother's residence and the Virginia hospital where they delivered. Users can examine the data by county, year, rural or urban classification, insurance coverage, age, race and ethnicity, delivery type, and maternal health indicators. The analysis includes both vaginal and cesarean deliveries. It also distinguishes between high- and low-risk deliveries and allows users to compare hospital characteristics, including location and staffed-bed capacity. Russell said location is the clearest factor affecting how far mothers traveled. "There's less capacity in rural areas. There's less options," he said. "When some of those options have gone away, then we see you have to travel even further." Virginia has lost several labor-and-delivery units in recent years. The Virginia Department of Health lists six hospitals or maternity units that closed between 2018 and 2024: Valley Health Warren Memorial Hospital, Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center, Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center, Sovah Health Martinsville, Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital, and HCA LewisGale Hospital Montgomery. VDH reported that 49 birthing hospitals remained in Virginia as of 2025. The closures do not affect every community equally, according to Russell. He said Hampton Roads and Virginia's other urban and suburban areas generally continue to have strong coverage, while travel times can rise sharply in nearby rural localities. "That issue is made that much more dramatic when there are closures," Russell said. "You can, in certain cases, see that spike happen." Economic pressures can make labor-and-delivery services hard to maintain in areas with fewer births. Russell cited limited capacity and fewer options in rural communities, but said addressing the problem will require cooperation among hospitals, policymakers, and other healthcare stakeholders. "I don't think [there's] sort of any one group to place the blame on, but it is a difficult problem that we all need to figure out how to solve," he said. Russell noted the dashboard could help state leaders evaluate requests to open new facilities and better understand how proposed closures could affect surrounding communities. The information could also support Virginia's certificate-of-need process, which regulates where certain healthcare facilities and services may be established. "We don't want to lose more, and we could benefit from having more," he said. "Those distance times would go down if there were more supply." Russell added that travel times are estimates based on typical driving conditions between a mother's residence and the delivery hospital. They do not account for real-time traffic, weather, bridge or tunnel delays, mountainous terrain, or whether the mother began her trip somewhere other than home. VHI developed the dashboard with the Human Services Research Institute. Russell said the organization wants to seek public feedback about potential changes or enhancements. The dashboard is available on Virginia Health Information's website.