A small hospital in Shattuck, Oklahoma, population 1,212, is trying to do something only one other critical-access hospital in the state has managed: bring back labor and delivery care after shutting it down. Newman Memorial Hospital last delivered babies in 2015, and its leaders now say they could reopen a maternity unit sometime in 2027 — if the money and staffing hold together long enough to get there.
A Decade-Old Gap, A New Push to Close It
The effort is being led by Tom Vasko, Newman Memorial's CEO, and his wife Amy Calhoun-Vasko, a certified nurse midwife, who moved from Virginia to rural Oklahoma in 2022 to take on the project, according to KOSU. Calhoun-Vasko has said the hospital was not ready to deliver babies immediately when she and her husband arrived three and a half years earlier, as reported by KGOU. The hospital's service area covers about a quarter of Oklahoma, and pregnant patients there currently have to transfer their care to delivering physicians after 26 weeks, per KOCO.
That gap has real consequences for families like Julie Schroeder's. The 25-year-old Arnett resident had planned to travel nearly two hours southeast to Weatherford Regional Hospital to give birth, KGOU reports — a trip that illustrates just how far rural Oklahomans often have to go for basic maternity care. Weatherford Regional is currently the only remaining critical-access hospital in the state offering maternity services, and if Newman Memorial succeeds, it would become the second, according to the same report.
What the New Unit Would Look Like
Newman Memorial's plan calls for four postpartum rooms, a triage room and two labor rooms, KOSU reports. Staffing would lean on a rotating group of four core OB-GYNs, each working one week out of a four-week cycle, while Calhoun-Vasko would handle low-risk births — a category the hospital estimates covers about 85% of pregnant patients, per KGOU. The visiting OB-GYNs would step in for high-risk deliveries and gynecological surgeries, the station notes.
The hospital has already hired a doula and rolled out lactation and mental-health services, KGOU reports. Certified nurse midwives like Calhoun-Vasko are advanced-practice registered nurses who specialize in primary, sexual and reproductive care, and the same outlet notes Oklahoma had just 86 of them statewide as of August, with only 12 of the state's 41 birthing hospitals having integrated midwifery providers into their care teams. Midwifery care, KGOU reports, can reduce interventions and healthcare costs while increasing patient satisfaction.
The Price Tag — and Where the Money Is Coming From
Getting there isn't cheap. Newman Memorial estimates it needs roughly $3 million to $4 million in startup funding for supplies, technology and labor, and the unit won't break even until births reach around 300 a year, KOSU reports. The hospital is slated to receive $1.4 million through the Rural Regional Reorientation Program, which KGOU reports will go toward beds, monitors, equipment and surgical needs, with infrastructure targeted to be in place by January 2027.
That funding is part of a much larger pot: the Rural Health Transformation Program, a five-year, $50 billion federal investment in rural healthcare, under which Oklahoma received more than $223 million in first-year funding tied to a state plan built around 29 initiatives, according to KGOU. Tom Vasko has said the funding gives him confidence the hospital will reach its maternity-care goal, the station reports.
A Desert With Few Oases
Newman Memorial's push comes against a stark statewide backdrop. Only 27% of Oklahoma's rural hospitals currently offer labor and delivery services, according to KGOU, while some counties had zero obstetric clinicians at all as of 2024. Separate reporting from KOSU put the share of Oklahoma's 78 rural hospitals without obstetrics at 68%, while a separate KOSU report cited 69% — the two figures differ slightly depending on the count, but both point to the same scarcity. Rural Oklahomans travel an average of 39 minutes to reach maternity services, compared with under 20 minutes in urban parts of the state, KOSU reports, and the state has lost 10 rural hospitals since 2005, with 33 of the remaining 78 considered at risk of closing and 22 at immediate risk.
The stakes of that scarcity show up in the state's maternal mortality numbers, which climbed from 25.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in the 2018-2020 reporting period to 31 per 100,000 in 2019-2021, according to KOSU. More recently, Oklahoma Watch identified 38 counties as maternity care deserts, where residents travel an average of three times longer to reach labor and delivery services than those in full-access counties — and the outlet reports that recent Medicaid cuts are projected to create still more of them.
The Medicaid Clock Is Ticking
Medicaid covered around half of Oklahoma births in 2025, with private insurance paying for about 42%, KGOU reports, underscoring just how central the program is to rural obstetric care. Oklahoma's supplemental hospital payments currently provide up to $6,000 per Medicaid birth, a boost that has helped keep some rural units afloat, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
But that support has an expiration date. Federal Medicaid cuts tied to the budget reconciliation law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill are designed to begin affecting states on January 1, 2028, KGOU reports, with Oklahoma's own directed-payment cuts set to start a year later, on January 1, 2029. Those payments will be phased down 10% annually until they reach the Medicare rate, the station reports, and federal Medicaid reductions overall are projected to total nearly $1 trillion over a decade. The Commonwealth Fund separately reports that Oklahoma's state-directed payments could be reduced or eliminated within two years to comply with the same federal law — meaning Newman Memorial may be racing to stand up its unit just as the financial ground underneath it starts to shift.
How Other Rural Hospitals Have Managed to Hang On
Newman Memorial isn't alone in trying to buck the national trend. Since the end of 2020, 146 rural hospitals nationwide have stopped delivering babies or announced plans to stop before the end of 2026, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, and more than 100 rural labor-and-delivery units have closed in the past five years alone, leaving just 42% of rural hospitals with the staff, expertise and equipment to safely deliver babies, per the Commonwealth Fund. Rural units are especially vulnerable because they require 24/7 staffing, serve more Medicaid patients at lower reimbursement rates, and handle fewer births overall, according to NPR.
One example of success comes from Minnesota's United Hospital District, which runs a small critical-access hospital and three clinics across rural counties and delivered 178 babies in 2025 — up from roughly 50 a year during much of its chief executive's tenure, NPR reports. That hospital joined Headwaters, a clinically integrated network of rural Minnesota hospitals, to gain purchasing leverage, and it offsets labor-and-delivery losses with revenue from other services like outpatient surgery, the same report notes. The Commonwealth Fund notes that success for programs like these often hinges on hospital leadership that pairs deep commitment with real business savvy, alongside enhanced Medicaid reimbursements — a combination Newman Memorial is now betting on for northwest Oklahoma.
Not every nearby hospital is chasing the same model. Darin Farrell has said Weatherford Regional Hospital will continue relying on its existing midwife partnership rather than overhauling its approach, according to KGOU — a reminder that even as Newman Memorial works toward reopening, the region's rural maternity map remains a patchwork of different strategies for surviving the same financial squeeze.
