By Amy Ellis
Nothing in the small, windowless waiting room of the East Carolina University High-Risk Pregnancy Center gives a clue of the state-of-the-art medical expertise found inside.
The threadbare wooden furniture in the dimly lit waiting room seems as if it hasn’t updated since the Greenville-based clinic was established more than two decades ago. But the facility boasts the only four obstetricians in Eastern North Carolina who specialize in maternal-fetal medicine, a sometimes high-tech subspecialty that requires years of extra training beyond traditional obstetrics.
Since its creation in 1988, when North Carolina ranked dead last in the nation for infant mortality, the center has provided frontline care and high-level access for women with high-risk pregnancies in the region. And it’s done so with the aid of state funding until last year, when the legislature failed to renew its annual grant of $325,000.
With last year’s cuts, clinic leaders were forced to lay off staff and cut services; they hope this year’s budget picture will look better.
This year, the state’s Child Fatality Task Force urged lawmakers to restore support for the clinic in their 2012-13 budget. The budget passed by the N.C. House of Representatives two weeks ago would grant the clinic $375,000, enough to restore staff and services – about the same amount one preterm birth costs the state’s Medicaid program. However the Senate budget proposed at the beginning of this week would eliminate the funding.
“We support a package of key programs that work together to help babies to be born healthy and make it to their first birthday,” said Elizabeth Hudgins, executive director of the CFTF, a legislative study commission that promotes equity in birth outcomes. “Our focus with the ECU High Risk Pregnancy Center is to preserve services in Eastern North Carolina, where infant mortality rates are far higher than the state average.”
“With the loss of funding for the clinic last year, wait times to see a doctor increased, outreach clinics were closed, and copays for procedures such as ultrasounds often imposed barriers to pregnant women getting the services they needed,” Hudgins said.
Poor region, poor outcomes
Infant mortality rates in Eastern North Carolina have always been the worst in the state; they’re currently three times higher than the state average of 7 deaths per 1,000 live births.
The ECU clinic backs up all private obstetrical offices in the 29 counties east of I-95.
In most of those counties, the majority of babies are born to women on Medicaid, the state and federal program that provides care for disabled, aged, and some low-income people. However, changes in reimbursement in recent years have left fewer private providers willing to accept Medicaid, which pays for prenatal care and births to low-income women who otherwise might not be eligible for the program.
So many pregnant women in eastern North Carolina get their care from local health departments, who then refer complicated patients to the ECU clinic, where Medicaid is the biggest payer.
The region has a large population of childbearing-aged women, as well as high concentrations of multiple risk factors for complicated pregnancies. Experts attribute the high rates of infant mortality to many issues, including the poor overall health in that region. It’s an area plagued by obesity, diabetes and smoking. Poverty and poor education, are prevalent. And the region’s rural nature – long distances to health care providers, lack of transportation, and poverty – often translates into limited or delayed access to care for many residents.
Perhaps even more striking are the tremendous inequities based on racial differences within the region. African Americans in eastern North Carolina are 2.3 times more likely to be born early or die in the first year of life, a statistic unchanged since the 1940s explained Dr. Jeff Livingston, Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at ECU’s Brody School of Medicine.
Livingston said socioeconomic differences, shorter times between pregnancies, and lack of breastfeeding among African Americans all affect outcomes. But long-standing attitudes of racism, and social barriers in Eastern North Carolina can’t be ignored if change is to happen. Even still, Livingston said there are some differences in outcomes that can’t be explained by income, education, or insurance coverage.
“This isn’t something people can educate themselves out of,” he said. “Black college graduates have poorer rates than white college graduates. Ethnicity plays a bigger role than education. We don’t know why.”
He notes Hispanic birth outcomes in North Carolina are the same as Caucasian outcomes, despite Latino tendencies toward more teen pregnancies and less insurance coverage.
US births, developing world statistics
The robin’s-egg-blue hallway of the ECU clinic hints at the impending new life that’s passed through it, including more than 7,300 patient encounters just this year. Some of these patients suffered from heart or kidney disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, HIV. Some were experiencing preeclampsia (dangerously high blood pressure that can kill a pregnant woman) or preterm labor. Others were expecting multiples, or babies with birth defects.
Lashonda Bowers of Williamston, 27 weeks pregnant, has been through three preterm deliveries under ECU’s care. Her last four children, including a set of twins, were born between 29 and 31 weeks of gestation. All are healthy.
“I thank God for this clinic,” she said. “Without them, I’d have nowhere to go, because my clinic couldn’t do anything more for me. I hope the state doesn’t give up on them, because we sure need them. They’ve saved so many lives.”
So far, funding hasn’t permitted ECU to track clinic-specific outcomes, but proponents of the clinic cite the overall decline in statewide infant mortality rates – roughly 40 percent since 1988 – as proof that existing measures are working. They worry continued funding cuts will undermine the progress that’s been made.
A continued lack of state funding will force the clinic to drastically reduce its capacity, said Livingston. “More expectant mothers with high risks for birth complications would have nowhere to go, or we’d see them later in their pregnancies. The result: more women getting the wrong care, from the wrong providers, at the wrong times, in the wrong places.”
That’s a grim outlook for an underserved region where infant mortality rates still rival those of some developing countries.
“In a state where we have so much medical expertise, it’s a shame that one part of the state, and specifically one portion of that population, experiences such disparity in birth outcomes,” said Rob Thompson, executive director of the Covenant with North Carolina’s Children, a coalition of child advocacy groups. “There are some deep-seated issues that need to be addressed. The important thing to remember is that infant mortality is the best indicator of women’s health in general. We have to take a broader look at what our state is doing to promote women’s health overall.”
Thompson stressed the importance of timing in prenatal care.
“Two or three weeks can be an eternity when you’re trying to prevent a preterm birth,” Thompson said.
He noted the state will be caring for any preterm babies born with Medicaid as their only insurance, so regardless of moral reasons for funding the clinic, it makes financial sense to do so.
“If they can prevent just one preterm birth, it’s worth it,” Thompson said. “It’s much less expensive to prevent preterm births than to provide the treatment necessary for babies born early.”
Thompson described North Carolina’s infant mortality history as “abysmal.” He said the ECU clinic is a “critical piece for preventing our rates from worsening, and for possibly making them a little better.”
“It’s serving the most at-risk patients in Eastern North Carolina that local health departments aren’t equipped to handle,” Thompson said.
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As the mother of a baby born 9 weeks too soon, it’s devastating to me to see our state’s lawmakers consider failing to fund this critical clinic. There is nothing like sitting by your child’s hospital bed, praying that they will survive, to make you understand how important this type of care is. We don’t get a do over on infant mortality programs. If they fail to fund the ECU clinic and the other infant mortality programs cut in this year’s budget, lives will be lost and years of progress undone. I’m truly disappointed in the Senate for their short-sightedness.