U.S. News names best hospitals for maternity care: Key trends and findings

It may be a relatively new ranking, but the U.S. News & World Report analysis of the top hospitals in maternity care appears to be gaining more attention.

U.S. News released its ranking of the 2025 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care Tuesday morning. The media organization received data from a record 817 hospitals, a 20% increase compared to last year, says Jennifer Winston, health data scientist for U.S. News. Half of the hospitals that were evaluated received recognition as the best maternity care hospitals.

The media group first published rankings in maternity care in 2021.

“We're thrilled we have … 817 hospitals that participated this year,” Winston tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “That's an all-time high for us. So we're really pleased that hospitals are choosing to participate.”

The rankings of the hospitals come at a time when more attention has been focused on America’s chilling maternal health crisis, with more women suffering serious complications and dying after giving birth.

(See part of our conversation with Jennifer Winston. The story continues below.)

Fewer complications

The top hospitals for maternity care were less likely to see serious newborn complications, with complication rates 44% lower than hospitals not recognized by U.S. News.

“Our hospitals that are rated as high performing always have lower newborn complications on average, but it is a very stark difference, especially this year, to see how much better our rated hospitals are doing for severe, unexpected newborn complications, in particular,” Winston says.

In addition, top maternity care hospitals are less likely to perform cesarean sections. The best maternity care hospitals had C-section rates that were 22% lower than hospitals that didn’t earn the ranking.

“Unnecessary C-sections for low-risk births are just one more possibility for complications for expectant parents,” Winston says. “It's a surgery. It's a traumatic procedure that parents go through at the same time that they now have a new baby in the home.”

“There's a lot of reasons why it's not medically possible to have a safe vaginal delivery, but for expectant parents, for whom it is safe, generally lower C-section rates is a better thing,” she adds.

In another noteworthy finding, the U.S. News top hospitals in maternity care had episiotomy rates that were 33% lower than other hospitals.

Winston says more hospitals are avoiding that procedure.

“As best practices evolve and education about some of these outcomes continues to evolve, …. some of these unnecessary interventions that maybe aren't good for parents, those rates start to come down,” she says.

• Read more: Black maternal health: Addressing the national crisis

Maternity care access

In addition to ranking the best maternity care hospitals, U.S. News also recognized hospitals that are delivering high-quality care in areas that would haven’t had maternity care options without their services.

This year, U.S. News honored 118 hospitals with the Maternity Care Access Hospital designation.

“Those are hospitals that provide care to communities that might otherwise become maternity care deserts if they weren't continuing to provide that care,” Winston says.

Since 2011, 267 rural hospitals have stopped providing obstetric services, according to the Chartis Center for Rural Health. The March of Dimes has also highlighted the emergence of maternity care deserts across the country.

“It’s very concerning. The March of Dimes highlighted that over 2 million women of reproductive age live in maternity care deserts, and that a third of counties in the United States are considered maternity care deserts. And that problem is just getting worse,” Winston says.

U.S. News also examined rates of breast feeding among patients, and the top-ranked hospitals have breast milk feeding rates that are 12% higher than other maternity care hospitals. Winston notes that there are regional differences in breastfeeding rates.

“There tends to be higher rates in the north and west of exclusive breast milk feeding. Rates are lower in the south and the southeast in particular,” she says.

U.S. News looked at outcomes and complications in compiling its list of the best hospitals for maternity care, and Winston says there’s no subjective element in the rankings.

“It's all data and numbers. It's all objective data for these rankings and ratings. So that makes us even more confident that the information that we're providing to consumers is an accurate representation of how hospitals are doing in terms of treating parents and their babies,” Winston says.

• Read more: As hospitals close obstetric units, maternity care deserts become more common

New data this year

For the first time this year, U.S. News is also including data on the race and ethnicity of patients at maternity hospitals. The information is included in the profile pages of each hospital.

Winston says the data isn’t included in the U.S. News scoring of the top hospitals, but the information can be useful to patients and health systems.

“It does provide an indicator of whether the babies born at a hospital are representative by race and ethnicity of the young children that live in the community,” Winston says. “So it's looking at whether a hospital is providing really great care, and whether they're providing really great care to everyone in their community, or whether they're only providing great care to a particular subset of the community. So we're excited to be publishing that for the first time, and it's on hospital profile pages, and it's information that's available to consumers as they make their decisions about where to seek care.”

Patients should consult with their physicians as they choose a hospital for delivery of their babies, Winston says, but she hopes the U.S. News analysis offers more information to guide choices.

“The ratings really are designed to both give an overall picture with the best hospitals for maternity care rating,” Winston says. “But then, in addition, we are also providing data on the individual metrics that we use in our methodology. So if a patient is particularly interested in C-sections or severe, unexpected newborn complications, they can see those data right there on the page with a bit more detail about all of the metrics.”

Top Metro Areas

U.S. News also named the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest number of hospitals ranked best in maternity care. These are the cities, listed alphabetically.

Chicago

Dallas-Fort Worth

Denver

Detroit

Los Angeles

New York

Philadelphia

Riverside-San Bernardino

San Francisco

Seattle