NEW YORK, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Over 500 hospitals have closed their labor and delivery departments since 2010, leaving most U.S. rural hospitals and more than a third of urban hospitals without obstetric care, according to a large new study.
Those closures, the study found, were slightly offset by the opening of new units in about 130 hospitals. Even so, the share of hospitals without maternity wards increased every year, said the study published Wednesday in JAMA, a prominent medical journal. Maternal deaths remained persistently high over that period, spiking during the pandemic.
