A recent study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology found that staying longer in a virtual maternity care program can help improve outcomes for women with high-risk pregnancies and their babies.
A high-risk pregnancy means there is a higher chance of problems for the mother or baby. This can happen for many reasons, such as health conditions like fetal and neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia (FNAIT) during pregnancy.
Virtual maternity programs are not all the same. Some offer more medical care and support than others. Researchers wanted to see if spending more time in a program with strong support would lead to better outcomes for babies.
They found that the longer someone used the program, the better the results were, including fewer preterm (early) births and less time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
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The study looked at medical data from Medicaid patients in six U.S. states between January 2024 and April 2025. It compared people who joined a virtual program with those who received regular care. The virtual program included remote health checks, care from different types of doctors and social support. Many people in the study had other health problems, like high blood pressure or obesity.
Researchers studied how long patients stayed in the program—at least one, two or three months—and looked at outcomes like preterm birth, NICU admission and how long babies stayed in the NICU.
Patients who stayed in the program for three months or more had the best results. Early births dropped from 11.6% to 8.8%. NICU admissions and length of stay also went down. Shorter program use showed smaller improvements.
“As payers and policymakers seek scalable solutions to maternal health challenges, these data suggest that virtual care models capable of maintaining patient connection over months, rather than weeks, may offer meaningful clinical value,” the researchers stated.
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