The spring 2025 issue of The Arkansas Family Physician, the official publication of the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians, includes an article spotlighting our analysis of travel time to delivery facilities for Arkansas mothers.
We reviewed data on birth events from 2016 to 2022 to estimate how much time Arkansas mothers spent traveling to birthing facilities. We found that median travel times ranged from as little as 2 minutes to as much as 73 minutes, depending on where mothers lived. Longer travel times to delivery facilities have been associated with higher risks of adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes.
Our analysis also found that the closing of hospitals’ labor and delivery services impacted travel times, in some cases severely. For example, after Helena Regional Medical Center’s labor and delivery unit closed in 2020, the median travel time to delivery facilities for Phillips County mothers increased from 6 minutes to 51 minutes.
For more on maternal and infant health in Arkansas, see our topic page.
