ICYMI: Instead of Addressing Alabama’s OB-GYN Shortage, the Trump Administration is Focusing on Using Robots to Provide Maternal Care Arrow

Alabama doctors are raising the alarm following Donald Trump's recent health care roundtable, where disgraced Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz highlighted Alabama's plan to use robots - yes, robots - for ultrasounds instead of addressing the shortage of human OB-GYNs. Alabama has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, and doctors warn that this proposal will do nothing to improve access to maternal care.

Alabama is facing a shortage of OB-GYNs, in part, due to Trump's Big Ugly Bill, which cuts Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion and puts five rural Alabama hospitals on the brink of closure. Trump's Big Ugly Bill and expiring ACA subsidies will also kick 150,000 Alabamians off their health care.

In response, DNC Communications Director Rosemary Boeglin released the following statement:

"Alabama women already face the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, and Donald Trump's cruel and dystopian policies will make this crisis even worse. The Trump administration should listen to Alabama doctors who know first-hand that robotic OBGYNs sound like a bad sci-fi novel, not a real health care plan. While Trump continues rolling back reproductive freedom and cutting women's health care, Democrats won't stop fighting for Alabama women."

Read more below:

WVTM: Alabama's robotic ultrasound plan raises concerns from OB-GYNs

By Zoe Blair

• Dr. Mehmet Oz recently highlighted Alabama's plan to use robots for ultrasounds due to a shortage of OB-GYNs during a rural healthcare roundtable with White House officials, a statement that has sparked significant attention on social media.

• According to the grant proposal, Alabama intends to allocate some of the funding for digital obstetric regionalization and telerobotic ultrasound. However, OB-GYNs in the state expressed skepticism about the plan's effectiveness.

• "This won't take care of access to maternal care, it won't decrease the mortality rate," said Dr. LoRissia Autery, an OB-GYN at Walker Women's Specialists, who serves patients in five rural counties.

• She emphasized that while the maternal mortality rate is a significant issue, robotic ultrasounds are not the solution.

• "There may be a case where a mom may have no fluid and that patient needs to go to a hospital, but if you're in a part of the county that doesn't have a hospital that has obstetrical services, now you have to drive an hour to an hour and a half to receive those services from a physician that did not do the ultrasound," Autery said. "If she is an hour and a half away, I still have to wait on her to get here. For us, someone is always here all the time. We live here."

• "There's something to be said about just human reaction, touching someone, hugging them if they get bad news. For me, I want that. That's one of the reasons I actually went into OB-GYN is because we have continuity of care," she said.

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