Arkansas’ Maternal Health is Struggling, But This Hospital Is One of America’s Best

Dr. Mendy Mack, a board-certified OB/GYN, had to reschedule her interview because her patient was going into labor earlier than expected. But shortly after delivering a healthy baby to a healthy mother, she was on the phone talking about her passion for maternal health and the positive culture at Mercy that enables that passion.

“What brings a woman to your office is not just her primary medical concern,” said Mack, who has been at Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas for 12 years. “There are other issues and being able to give her an opportunity to share all of those things allows you to provide better care.”

Although she originally wanted to be a pediatrician, during rotations in medical school, she discovered her passion was women’s health—from adolescence through menopause.

“I was really drawn to how important a woman’s health is for her family. A healthy woman really means a healthy family. Being able to provide care for that woman, I know it will spill over into her ability to care for her family,” she told Newsweek.

Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas has been serving patients in Rogers, Arkansas, since 2008. In 2024, the facility had 279,714 outpatient visits and 2,046 births.

It was also ranked as one of the top facilities on Newsweek’s recent ranking of America’s Best Maternity Hospital 2025. This ranking highlights 444 maternity hospitals across the U.S. based on hospital quality metrics, patient experience surveys and recommendations from health care professionals across the nation, including neonatal and perinatal doctors, nurses and midwives. Of the three Arkansas hospitals on the ranking, Mercy was the only one to receive five ribbons.

“We have a very healthy culture built on collaboration, mutual respect [and] putting the patient first,” Chief Medical Officer Sonal Bhakta told Newsweek. “If you put the patient’s clinical care first, [along] with the needs of your staff, that’s what really creates a high-quality environment and a culture that’s focused on making sure that we do the best we can all together for our patients.”

The Mercy health system, Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas is a part of, was founded in 1986 by the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic ministry. But its history extends back almost 200 years to Dublin, Ireland. Now the system has locations across Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. The dedication to care for impoverished women and children continues to influence the culture and values of Mercy today.

“People are very intentional at Mercy about taking care of the poor, no matter what,” Whitney Tolbert, the director of nursing for women and children’s services at Mercy, said. “One of our core values is dignity–we treat every single person like they were created in the image of God and they deserve every bit of care, respect and dignity that we can provide to them.”

This includes programs to check on patients at home, providing daycare and transportation to appointments, hiring bilingual caregivers to improve communication and education with the Spanish-speaking population and opening clinics to address the health needs of demographics with higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality.

To provide the best maternity care, nurses and physicians have to listen to their patients. Tolbert said maternity patients often come in with their own knowledge, expectations and preferences, so listening to those needs is essential for providing individualized care.

“It’s our role as clinicians to hear that and then equip them with the knowledge that they need to better understand what really needs to happen to ensure a successful pregnancy and delivering a healthy mom and baby,” she said. “We want to respect [patients’] ability to be involved and make decisions and we want those decisions to be informed.”

At Mercy, the nurses and physicians know that the most important factor for a successful pregnancy is a healthy mom—which starts before she’s even pregnant.

“If there’s one thing I could tell moms to do to ensure success in their pregnancy, labor and delivery, it is to be healthy before you even get pregnant,” Tolbert said.

Overall, Arkansas ranked as the 48th healthiest state in the U.S., according to the United Health Foundation’s America’s Health Rankings 2024 Annual Report. It also has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. According to CDC data from 2018-2022, Arkansas had a maternal mortality rate of 38.3 per 100,000 live births, well above the U.S. national average of 23.2.

The AMMRC Legislative Report from December 2024 found that 95 percent of pregnancy-related deaths between 2018 and 2021 in the state were preventable. And the majority of those deaths occur one to 365 days postpartum.

As an OB/GYN, Mack is often the only doctor her patients see. Most of the time, her pregnant patients are relatively healthy. But for those who aren’t, she makes sure to write referrals to physicians who can address a patient’s underlying health problems that can impact the pregnancy, like smoking, drug use, hypertension, diabetes, weight management, cardiology issues or mental health conditions.

Mercy has made an effort in recent years to engage women as early as possible in their pregnancy journey to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality risks, establish better trust between the patient and clinicians and decrease patient anxiety.

Through the nurse navigator program, patients connect with registered nurses at Mercy who have experience with maternal and newborn care to provide more education and support. Mercy also recently implemented the Philips Avent Pregnancy+ app, developed by Philips and Ingeborg Initiatives, to offer state information and tools to increase access to care, improve health literacy and adopt healthy habits to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.

Patients can also communicate with hospital staff through patient satisfaction surveys, where clinicians can receive feedback and improve their practices.

“We’ve rolled out some toolkits and initiatives [that] focus on the importance of that relationship between physicians and nurses and their patience because if a patient doesn’t feel comfortable or safe or heard, their likelihood of being compliant with coming to visits and doing what their caregivers recommend is going to be really low,” Tolbert said.

One of the biggest challenges staff at Mercy face is the rapidly growing population in the area. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Benton County, Arkansas, had a population of 321,566 in 2024, a 13 percent increase from 2020.

As the community grows, patients often have to travel to receive the necessary care. This distance and lack of transportation make it difficult for patients to show up for appointments. Mack notes she has patients who drive one to two hours to visit Mercy. But for some, the quality of care at Mercy is worth the long commute.

A state-of-the-art NICU also allows staff to communicate and plan with high-risk patients before birth to ensure that any pediatric surgical services and other care can happen on campus. This allows mothers and babies to receive care where their support system is, instead of transferring to a larger city like Little Rock.

“We’re able to keep babies born at earlier ages of gestation [so] the moms don’t have to be transferred out,” Mack said. “Being able to keep that woman here where her community is, where her resources are, that’s big. And being able to provide care for babies born earlier here also improves internal outcomes as well.”

Finances are also an issue for patients in Mercy’s community. Whether they are insured or not, lower-income patients can face extra challenges such as struggling to purchase healthy food or being unable to take time off from work for appointments.

Thankfully, Mercy helps patients beyond their hospital visit. Mercy staff will call on community resources to ensure patients get the care and supplies they need through carpooling and donations. There is also a financial assistance program to help patients get medically necessary care based on need, as determined by the Federal Poverty Guidelines.

Health insurance reimbursements are also a hurdle for Mercy and contribute to the high maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the state.

“When moms are on Medicaid, they only extend that coverage for a certain period of time but [moms] really need it extended for a longer period of time because if you are high risk and you have any kind of morbidity, you need longer-term care to prevent mortality,” Bhakta said. “When the coverage runs out, [patients] quit seeking care. And we really need to advocate to be able to extend that because moms need good care for a long period of time.”

Even though they are a top maternity hospital in the country, Mack said that nurses and physicians are continuously improving to keep up with the latest medical care and standards through skill labs.

“As a provider, being in an environment where you’re encouraged to grow and continue to improve your skills, that means a lot,” she said. “When you’re in a facility that encourages that, it’s a great place for patients to receive care [and] as a provider, it’s also a great place to work.”

Through the continued improvement and efforts to increase the quality and accessibility of care, Mercy hopes to boost maternal health outcomes in their community.

“We can’t have a best practicing hospital in every county–it’s just not feasible,” nurse director Whitney Tolden said. “There are a lot of counties that don’t have an OB clinic, let alone an OB hospital like ours that delivers.”

The state is working to remedy some of these constraints that limit access to maternal health care. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently announced the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act to improve maternal health in the state with a $7 million investment. The bill would establish presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women, offer reimbursement pathways for doulas and community health workers and establish Medicaid coverage for remote ultrasounds, blood pressure monitoring and glucose monitoring related to pregnancy.

Mercy’s Bhakta said mothers are “the center of wellness” for the entire family, and investing in maternal health will not just improve the well-being of mothers, but of their entire families as well.

“If you focus on the mother and you focus on her wellness, that trickles down to the children and the rest of the family unit,” she said.