Iowa’s 2025 Report Card: Diminishing Access to Health Care
DES MOINES, IA – This year, access to health care in Iowa has continued to decline. From 2015 to 2025, Iowa’s health care system has dropped nine spots in national rankings on access and affordability, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and cost, healthy lives, and equity. These declines reflect the reality of what Iowans are living every day: care is harder to reach, more expensive, and less reliable.
Over the last few years, communities across the state have seen a dramatic drop in health care workers who are leaving Iowa either for better opportunities or to states where they know they’ll have access to resources needed to practice and provide care. This migration has contributed to facilities across the state being forced to close their doors, having the biggest impact on maternal health care centers, mental health facilities, and senior care centers. According to a report from earlier this year, 20 rural Iowa hospitals are at risk of closure, with five facing immediate risk of shutting down.
Just last year, MercyOne Newton had to close their birthing unit. Now, that same hospital is on a national list of hospitals under threat of closing altogether because of the federal budget bill passed earlier this year – which every single one of Iowa’s federal representatives voted for.
These failing grades are not sustainable for Iowa’s future, and Iowans are ready for change. Take a look at Iowa’s “2025 Report Card” — and why we can’t afford more of the same next year:
IOWA’S 2025 REPORT CARD:
ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE: F
- Iowa currently ranks 44th in the nation for physicians per capita, and dead last for OBGYNs.
- Around 400 Iowa physicians stop practicing each year. Roughly half of those professionals leave the state completely, and some Iowa counties have not had a student apply for medical school in decades.
- These trends have resulted in maternity care deserts – or counties that don’t have labor and delivery services or doctors who provide prenatal care. Fifty-seven percent of Iowa counties do not have an obstetric facility, even though 22 percent of babies are born to women in rural counties.
- Iowa’s mental health care system is also lagging in several areas, as the state is consistently ranked among the last in the nation for psychiatric beds, for the number of psychiatrists per capita, mental health care providers, and mental health workforce availability.