We are excited to share this report on the 2026 Maternity Care Access Convening that was organized by the Oregon Perinatal Collaborative and the Oregon Health Authority.  74 stakeholders from across our state gathered to understand the current crisis in maternity care and the drivers of hospital closures and to contribute their expertise to possible solutions to improve the health of Oregon families and communities.  

The report includes essential information on the state of maternity care access in our state and makes key recommendations to improve access to high quality maternal health care to support population health in Oregon.

The Oregon Perinatal Collaborative (OPC) visited each of Oregon’s 47 hospitals that provide labor, birth, and postpartum services in 2024 to learn about their strengths and challenges, build relationships, and gather information to ensure that our quality improvement work is responsive to the real needs of Oregon communities and hospitals. Our top priority in 2024 was to establish or strengthen communication and relationships with our essential partners, including each birthing hospital in Oregon, so that our improvement work reaches every birth. This report shares our findings from these visits.

While we expected to find some common experiences and concerns among Oregon hospitals, we were astounded to learn that the key areas of concern and core needs were essentially universal across the state from Critical Access Hospitals in rural and frontier counties to Level IV regional centers in urban areas. There were also crucial differences in the needs of rural and urban hospitals and unique concerns and needs in different parts of the state and across roles within the health care workforce. We have tried to capture the full depth and breadth of knowledge shared with us in these visits in a way that will be useful to all our partners including policymakers, hospital leadership, and funders.

The nurses, physicians, midwives, and hospital leaders at these visits across the state shared valuable insight and actionable information that can support everyone working to make Oregon a safe and welcoming place to be pregnant, give birth, be born and thrive within healthy communities. We are immensely grateful to everyone who participated for sharing with us during these visits.

The OPC would like to thank all the presenters and attendees of the 2025 OPC Annual Summit!

The session recordings and presentation materials are available at the link below.  On this page you will find links to the full recording and materials. No log in is necessary to access the material, and the link can be shared with anyone.