Rural-Urban Differences in Obstetric Care, 2002–2010, and Implications for the Future

Approximately 15% of the 4 million annual US births occur in rural hospitals.To (1) measure differences in obstetric care in rural and urban hospitals, and to (2) examine whether trends over time differ by rural-urban hospital location.This was a retrospective analysis of hospital discharge records for all births in the 2002-2010 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, which constitutes 20% sample of US hospitals (N = 7,188,972 births: 6,316,743 in urban...