While this may be a relatively new ranking, U.S. News & World Report’s analysis of the top hospitals for obstetric care seems to be gaining more attention.
U.S. News released its ranking of the best hospitals for obstetric care in 2025 on Tuesday morning. Jennifer Winston, a health data scientist at U.S. News, said the media organization received data from 817 hospitals, a 20% increase over last year and a record high. Half of the hospitals evaluated were recognized as best maternity care hospitals.
In 2021, the media group released its rankings for the maternity care category for the first time.
“We are thrilled to have 817 hospitals participating this year,” Winston tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “This is an all-time high for us, so we are really pleased that the hospital chose to participate.”
The hospital’s ranking comes at a time when more and more women are receiving increased attention to the nation’s dire maternal and child health crisis, with more women suffering and dying from serious complications after giving birth.
(Watch part of our conversation with Jennifer Winston. Story continues below.)
fewer complications
Top hospitals for obstetric care were less likely to experience serious neonatal complications, with a 44% lower complication rate than hospitals not recognized by U.S. News.
“Although our high-performing hospitals have always had fewer neonatal complications on average, this year in particular “When you look at how well they’re doing against the disease, the difference is stark,” Winston says.
Additionally, caesarean sections are less likely to be performed at top maternity hospitals. The best maternity care hospitals had a cesarean section rate that was 22% lower than hospitals that did not earn the ranking.
“Unnecessary C-sections for low-risk births only create one more potential complication for expectant parents,” says Winston. “It’s a surgery. It’s a traumatic procedure that parents go through when they have a baby in the house.”
“While there are many reasons why a safe vaginal birth is medically impossible, lower C-section rates are generally better for expectant parents who can have a safe vaginal birth,” she says. added.
Another notable finding was that U.S. News found that top hospitals for obstetric care had episiotomy rates 33% lower than other hospitals.
Winston said more hospitals are avoiding the procedure.
“As best practices continue to evolve and the education around some of these outcomes continues to evolve, … some of the unnecessary interventions that are probably not good for parents are starting to go down in rate,” she says.
Access to maternity care
In addition to ranking the best maternity care hospitals, U.S. News also recognized hospitals that provide quality care in areas that otherwise would not have an option for maternity care.
This year, U.S. News designated 118 hospitals as Maternity Care Access Hospitals.
“These are hospitals that provide care to communities that otherwise could become obstetric deserts,” Winston said.
Since 2011, 267 rural hospitals have stopped providing obstetric services, according to the Chartis Center for Rural Health. The March of Dimes also highlighted the emergence of obstetric care deserts across the country.
“That’s very alarming. The March of Dimes has announced that more than 2 million women of reproductive age live in maternity care deserts, and that one-third of U.S. counties are in maternity care deserts.” He emphasized that it is considered. And the problem is only getting worse,” Winston says.
U.S. News also looked at breastfeeding rates among patients, and the top-ranked hospitals had breastfeeding rates 12% higher than other maternity hospitals. Winston points out that there are regional differences in breastfeeding rates.
“The North and West tend to have higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding, and rates are particularly low in the South and Southeast,” she says.
While U.S. News looked at outcomes and complications when creating its list of best hospitals for obstetric care, Winston said there is no subjective element to the rankings.
“It’s all about data and numbers. All of these rankings and ratings are objective data. So the information we’re giving consumers is about how hospitals are doing when it comes to treating parents and their babies. We now have even more confidence that we are accurately representing the population,” Winston said.
New data this year
For the first time this year, U.S. News is also publishing data on the race and ethnicity of maternity hospital patients. Information is posted on each hospital’s profile page.
Winston said this data is not included in the U.S. News scoring of top hospitals, but the information could be useful to patients and health systems.
“This is an indicator of whether the babies born in the hospital are racially and ethnically representative of the infants who live in the community,” Winston says. “That is, are hospitals really providing good care, are they really providing good care to everyone in the community, or are they only providing good care to certain parts of the community? So we’re excited to be able to make that available to the public for the first time, and it’s on the hospital’s profile page to help consumers decide where to receive care. This is information you can do.”
Winston says patients should consult their doctors when choosing a hospital to give birth, but hopes the U.S. News analysis will provide more information to guide their choices.
“This rating is really designed to give us a complete picture of which hospitals are best suited for evaluating obstetric care,” Winston says. “But in addition to that, we also provide data on the individual indicators that we use in our methodology. So if a patient is particularly interested in caesarean section or severe unexpected neonatal complications, all You can see a little more detailed data about the metrics on the page.
Popular metropolitan areas
U.S. News also named the 10 metropolitan areas with the most hospitals as the best for obstetric care. These cities are listed alphabetically.
chicago
Dallas-Fort Worth
denver
detroit
Los Angeles
new york
philadelphia
Riverside San Bernardino
san francisco
seattle
