Increasing Patient-Centered Access to Immediate Postpartum LARC in New Mexico and Tennessee

Offering postpartum patients the opportunity to decide to have an IUD or implant inserted shortly after birth, also know as immediate postpartum LARC (IPP LARC), is considered a best practice. However, barriers including a lack of reimbursement for the service, limited awareness of the option among both providers and patients, and the challenges of implementing the service even in settings that are committed to doing so, have resulted in limited access to IPP LARC across the country.

With the support of NIRH, partners in New Mexico – Bold Futures (formerly Young Women United), Southwest Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains and the New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative, and Tennessee – Vanderbilt University, SisterReach, and University of Tennessee-Knoxville have successfully advocated for policy change that increased reimbursement for IPP LARC, an important step towards access..

Our partners worked with their respective state Medicaid agencies to separate reimbursement for LARC devices, which are very costly, from the standardized payment bundle assigned to postpartum care. This allows providers and hospitals to be fairly reimbursed for both the device and the procedure. Both of these states also have coalitions that include reproductive justice organizations that advocate for the policy wins, as well as lead efforts to ensure that policies expanding access to LARC are non-coercive and patient-centered.