The highest-risk pregnancies cared for by women's health provider Maven had 32% fewer NICU admissions and 10% fewer C-sections than national benchmarks.
So finds a new study from the Maven Clinical Research Institute. The study looked at high-risk Maven members with hypertension or diabetes, two of the most common conditions in pregnancy that drive adverse outcomes and can be helped with care management, compared to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It turns out that when you get them more care and support, they’re better off,” Neel Shah, M.D., chair of Maven’s scientific advisory board and the company's former chief medical officer, told Fierce Healthcare.
Support doesn’t always have to be a virtual doctor visit, he added. It could look like reminders to take low-dose aspirin, planning diet changes with a nutritionist or meeting with a doula. “Maven provides access to lots of different resources... but what each person might need is a little bit different.”
The cross-sectional study compared outcomes for over 9,300 Maven members against over 5,800 privately insured patients from CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), a nationally representative survey of women who recently gave birth.
News of the latest study was accompanied by citations from three other recent studies into other maternal Maven interventions. A study of Maven’s birth planning offering in May found high-risk members who had a virtual birth planning visit had 59% lower odds of NICU admission. They were also nearly four times as likely to actively participate in labor and delivery decisions compared to those who didn’t have such a visit.
“You wouldn't run a marathon without training,” Shah noted. “It really significantly changes people's risk of a bad outcome if they have the benefit of that planning.”
More recently, a Maven study—currently undergoing peer review—found nearly three-quarters of at-risk members who engaged with Maven’s nudges for preeclampsia reported taking low-dose aspirin, compared to 63% of women nationally. The latter is based on a benchmark developed by Maven from a general public survey of over 1,000 privately insured patients who recently gave birth. The nudges at-risk members engaged with included brief education about preeclampsia paired with a prompt to talk to a provider about low-dose aspirin.
Maven has published a number of its own benchmarks (PDF) as the federal government has stopped efforts to track maternal and infant health data. For example, CDC’s PRAMS was long the gold standard for tracking risk factors, prenatal care and outcomes of pregnancies, per Shah, but data collection was paused in 2025 under the Trump administration.
Additionally, between January and February 2025, 203 public health datasets were removed from the CDC and HHS, per Maven’s website. These largely targeted racial, ethnic and gender identity health variables, where disparities in maternal outcomes are most pronounced.
Maven feels it’s appropriate to publish its own benchmarks because of its large patient base, which it believes to be nationally representative. “Going forward we put out our own benchmark, so there would be something to compare against,” Shah said.
Finally, another recent Maven study—also currently undergoing peer review—looked more broadly beyond high-risk members at the positive impact of doulas.
Doulas can help patients create a birth plan, discuss birth positions or breathing techniques and educate patients to advocate for themselves. Maven found nearly all members who met with a virtual doula felt better able to participate in decisions about their birth and 86% felt less anxious after their appointments. Also, 80% took at least one specific action—like changing position, requesting intermittent monitoring, or delaying an epidural—during labor because they discussed it with their doula (Previous Maven research has also found doulas reduce the risk of C-Sections).
When it comes to employers and health plans, Shah says they care both about outcomes and about healthcare costs. While a day in the NICU is more costly than a C-Section in terms of dollars, he explained, a C-Section has downstream impacts on quality of life and other outcomes. “Nobody wins when a baby ends up in the NICU,” Shah said. “If a mom avoids a C-Section and a baby avoids a NICU, then the mom is better off and the employer is better off.”
Shah is transitioning to a new role as president of Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America. The initiative, founded by philanthropist Olivia Walton of the Walton family, aims to cut the U.S. maternal death rate in half within five years. Shah will help drive its strategy to turn proven solutions into measurable improvements.
Maven’s maternity program gives members 24/7 access to OBGYNs, midwives, doulas, mental health providers and other specialists. Employers offering Maven fertility and maternity support save an average of $9,600 per birth, Maven claims.