Eye On Illinois: Maternity deserts a problem for everyone, not just young families

Advocating for public policy often requires convincing people the importance of issues that don’t directly affect their lives.

The challenge takes on an added layer when it involves explaining links in the chain from sacrifice to benefit. One go-to example is complaints about property taxes that fund elite public school systems, making the communities highly desirable and inflating real estate prices. A homeowner might not have children in the district, but when it comes time to sell they stand to make top dollar.

That certainly oversimplifies the issue, but “good schools” are at the top of many homebuyers’ priority lists and communal investment in those institutions benefit everyone. And that’s just the cold dollars-and-cents view, saying nothing about the importance of preparing today’s young people to be tomorrow’s leaders.

The thought surfaces when reading coverage of a trickier issue: maternal care deserts. FarmWeek’s Tammie Sloup, a longtime newsroom colleague, wrote this week about the 36 Illinois counties with no hospitals offering obstetric care and no obstetric providers. The information comes from a 2022 March of Dimes report, which codes 16 other Illinois counties as having low or moderate access.

Illinois is in line with a national trend, as 36% of the country’s counties earned a “desert” designation. What’s more frustrating is seeing the numbers getting worse.

“We’ve come too far over the last 40 to 50 years of being able to provide good OB care,” said Pat Schou, executive director of the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network. “It’s like we’re stepping back in time. We worked so hard to get the best of care so that you have a healthy baby and a healthy mom.”

Critical access care hospitals are in rural areas with 25 or fewer acute care inpatient beds. Shou said that in 1999 there were 28; now there are four.

People who have choices about where to live tend to consider availability of quality health care. Those with the ability to plan for family decisions are understandably likely to gravitate toward reliable hospitals. Maternity services provide needed operational and fiscal stability to medical practices, most of which tend to provide quality jobs and benefits.

Many statistics around this issue reveal the inherent challenges inhibiting solutions: a decline in the overall state birth rate is nothing an individual family can address, while struggles with Medicaid funding and the escalating costs of health insurance and providing care are national, if not global, economic issues, meaning Springfield can only help so much.

Quality, available medical care benefits everyone, even if only economically. Whether or not you’re looking to start or grow a family, this issue belongs on your radar screen. Their limited power notwithstanding, Illinois lawmakers should investigate potential action steps.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.