Working with Hospitals to Increase Access to Immediate Postpartum LARC in New Mexico and Utah

As more states have worked with their public and private insurers to allow long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), including IUDs and implants, to be covered in a postpartum setting, work to implement the policy so that these services are actually offered to patients is vital. This includes revising systems for billing and coding to ensure that the institutions are paid appropriately and informing and educating key stakeholders about the policy change and why it is important to offer all patients.

NIRH partners in New Mexico, including Bold Futures (formerly Young Women United), Southwest Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and the New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative in New Mexico, and in Utah at the University of Utah in Utah, worked with hospitals in their states to implement a Medicaid policy that increased access to immediate postpartum LARC IPP LARC). In New Mexico, four hospitals, including hospitals in rural areas and hospitals for the Indian Health Service, which serve primarily Native American populations, implemented IPP LARC based on a toolkit and training created by the coalition. In Utah, advocates trained providers on insertion and removal of LARC devices to increase capacity amongst medical staff, provided individual technical assistance to hospitals on offering IPP LARC, and worked with one of the state’s largest public-private insurers to begin reimbursing for this service. In both states, trainings included a focus on ensuring patient autonomy in decision-making to guard against potential coercion of patients towards choosing one method of contraception over another.