House Health Care Committee reviews bill to license freestanding birth centers and exempt them from certificate-of-need review

Legislative counsel Jennifer Carver reviewed H.40 for the House Health Care Committee on Feb. 7, describing a bill that would license freestanding birth centers, remove those centers from the state's certificate-of-need (CON) requirements, and direct the Agency of Human Services to seek federal approval for Medicaid coverage of birth-center services.

The bill’s stated purposes are “to reduce health care costs, protect women's access to prenatal, maternity, birthing, postpartum, and newborn care services, and ensure women have a choice in how and where they give birth,” Carver told the committee. She cited endorsements of the birth-center model by national groups and federal evidence that birth centers can yield better outcomes and lower costs for low‑risk pregnancies.

H.40 would add a new licensure chapter to Title 18 defining a birth center as “a facility that is not a hospital or part of a hospital at which births are planned to occur away from the pregnant individual's residence following a low risk pregnancy,” and would require Department of Health licensure…