A northeast Arkansas hospital system announced Tuesday it’s continuing to expand access to a program for pregnant patients on Medicaid, an effort to close the maternal health gap in the region.
St. Bernards Medical Center launched the Maternal Life360 HOME program in Jonesboro in November 2024, allowing pregnant and postpartum Arkansans in Craighead County to receive at-home visits during and after high-risk pregnancies. The health system brought the program to Greene County in December, and it started accepting patients in Lawrence County on Tuesday, according to a St. Bernards news release.
Emily McGee, St. Bernards vice president for Nursing and Women’s and Children’s Services, said last month that the health system planned “to continue to grow by serving additional counties in the near future.”
“Ultimately, our vision is to have a program wherever we have a pregnancy or women’s health clinic,” McGee said in Tuesday’s news release.
In November 2022, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved a request from the Arkansas Department of Human Services to allow an additional 5,000 pregnant and postpartum Arkansans to receive Life360 HOME services.
Life360 started as part of Arkansas Health and Opportunity for Me, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion. Initially, only Medicaid expansion enrollees were eligible to participate in Life360 HOME, but the program now includes any Arkansan on Medicaid with a high-risk pregnancy living in a Life360 service area.
Arkansans must not be currently receiving other state or federally funded home-visiting services to be eligible for the Life360 HOME program.
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Arkansas has the nation’s fourth-highest rate of maternal mortality, with 38 maternal deaths per 1,000 live births between 2018 and 2022, according to the independent health research center KFF. Arkansas also had the nation’s third-highest infant mortality rate in 2022, with nearly eight infant deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. St. Bernards noted these statistics in Tuesday’s news release and said expanding Life360 HOME into Lawrence County is “a direct effort to address” these issues.
Arkansas remains the only state that has taken no action to adopt the federal option of extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months after birth, according to KFF.
Legislation that would have expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months did not pass the Legislature in 2023 or 2025. State Medicaid officials Janet Mann and Elizabeth Pitman told lawmakers last year that the Department of Human Services opposed the effort due to its cost.
Pitman called Life360 HOME “a cornerstone of our strategy to improve maternal health outcomes throughout the state” in Tuesday’s announcement.
“By addressing health and social needs together, these programs can save the lives of pregnant women and their infants,” Pitman said.
DHS funds Life360 HOME services in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Batesville and is working on launching the program in Hot Springs and Rogers, department officials said last month.
The program in Jonesboro has served roughly 60 families so far, McGee said in the news release.
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