First phase of the Arkansas’s Healthy Moms, Health Babies Act begins

Lawmakers returned to the capitol to review proposed rule changes aimed at implementing Gov. Sanders’ Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Lawmakers returned to the capitol this week to review proposed rule changes aimed at implementing one of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ top priorities: the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act.

The law, signed earlier this year as Act 124, targets Arkansas’s high rate of high-risk pregnancies and maternal health challenges. 

Passing the legislation was just the beginning. Now, the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) is working to put the law into practice.

“Every woman and child that doesn’t end up sick or dead because of what we do here is a win in my mind,” a DHS official said during testimony Wednesday.

According to DHS, approximately 32,000 to 35,000 births occur annually in Arkansas. Historically, Medicaid has covered 48% to 50% of those births. With that level of responsibility, officials said it’s time to focus more heavily on prenatal care and better tracking of outcomes.

To do so, DHS presented two major rule changes:

Presumptive eligibility for pregnant women: This would allow women to receive immediate, temporary Medicaid coverage while their full applications are still being processed. The goal is to ensure women can begin prenatal care without unnecessary delays.

Changes to Medicaid reimbursement rates: This rule would revise how providers are paid for prenatal, delivery and postpartum care. Lawmakers and healthcare providers said current rates are unsustainable, especially for rural hospitals struggling to keep labor and delivery units open.

“As you’ve seen some of the labor and delivery units close, I think we’ve said since 2019 we had 40. Now we’re down to 33,” said Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Johnson and Pope County). “We’re trying to stop the bleeding and make sure that we’re increasing those reimbursement rates.”

But those changes come with questions. Lawmakers pressed DHS for details, asking how many women are expected to use the benefits, how potential federal funding cuts could impact the program and what effect increased reimbursement rates might have on cesarean section rates.

“There’s a concern that increasing the reimbursement rate could result in more C-sections, but we’d actually like to see fewer,” Pilkington said. “Because it’s a more complicated procedure — and because we have a high obesity rate in Arkansas, we know we’re going to have more high-risk pregnancies. But we want to address that carefully.”

The law also includes measures to improve care for at-risk mothers, such as blood pressure monitoring and continuous glucose monitoring — both critical in managing pregnancy complications tied to conditions like hypertension and diabetes.

Beyond expanding coverage, DHS emphasized that the rules are also designed to improve maternal health data.

“We don’t have good data on pregnant women — how many types of clinicians they see during pregnancy or where they’re delivering,” a DHS representative said “This is where we attempt to begin gathering that data.”

Now that the rules have been reviewed, they’ll head to the Arkansas Legislative Council committee for final consideration later this month.

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