New Findings from University of California in the Area of Managed Care Reported (Barriers to Medicaid Participation for Community Midwives in California): Managed Care

2026 AUG 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Managed Care. According to news reporting out of San Francisco, California, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “The United States faces persistent perinatal health care inequities, and there is growing recognition that midwifery care, including community-based care offered outside of hospital settings, could address these challenges. Medicaid finances half of the births in the United States, but state policies notably limit access to community midwifery care for people insured through Medicaid.”

Financial supporters for this research include National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Office of Research on Women’s Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of California, “To understand barriers to Medicaid participation and how community midwives navigate these barriers in practice, we conducted a qualitative, interview-based study with midwives (n = 62) and nonmidwife birth center administrators (n = 2) in independent home birth practices and freestanding birth centers in California; data were collected between 2022 and 2025. The main barriers community midwives face to becoming Medicaid providers in California include: (1) extremely low reimbursement rates for the extensive continuity of care community midwives provide; (2) liability insurance and birth center licensing requirements that are unaffordable and not reflective of community birth settings; and (3) complex administrative bureaucracy that places undue burden on these independent clinicians. Midwives expressed a commitment to being accessible within their communities and striving to provide care to people across the socioeconomic spectrum. Because of the numerous barriers to being Medicaid providers, midwives employed various workarounds to increase access to midwifery care. The expansion of midwifery care is a critical intervention to improve perinatal health care in the United States, although access to the midwifery model of care remains suppressed by a fragmented approach to insurance and long-standing marginalization of US midwives. In California, structural barriers make Medicaid participation administratively inaccessible and financially unsustainable for most community midwives.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “These findings have national implications for improving state Medicaid policies, such as by reducing administrative burdens, improving reimbursement rates, and restructuring the payment model; doing so could increase access to community midwifery care and improve perinatal health care outcomes.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Barriers to Medicaid Participation for Community Midwives in California. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 2026. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Ariana Thompson-Lastad, Osher Center for Integrative Health, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California. Additional authors for this research include Jessica M. Harrison, Chanda Williams, Sara Jhanjar, Mounika Parimi, Jennifer T. Dunn, Maria T. Chao, Jennifer James, Liz Donnelly, Holly Smith and Tanya Khemet Taiwo.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/jmwh.70157. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health is: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA.

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