This bill aims to bring digital health tools into maternity care by enabling remote monitoring and provider-facing technologies, funding demonstration and capacity-building efforts, and commissioning an expert study on technology’s role in maternal outcomes. It targets gaps in access and quality that drive elevated maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity in underserved communities.
For professionals: the measure is designed to influence how care is delivered (more remote screening, monitoring, and clinical decision support), how the maternity workforce is trained (technology-enabled collaborative learning), and what evidence HHS and outside experts gather about technology’s benefits and risks — especially where racial, geographic, and tribal disparities are largest.
At a Glance
What It Does
Amends federal demonstration authority to permit telehealth tools for pregnancy and up to one year postpartum, establishes two HHS grant programs to scale technology-enabled collaborative learning and provider-facing digital tools, and directs an independent study on clinical technologies used in maternity care. It also requires evaluations and reporting to Congress.
Who It Affects
Medicaid and maternal care delivery systems that participate in federal demonstrations, safety-net and rural providers, tribal health programs, telehealth and remote-monitoring vendors, and pregnant and postpartum people in medically underserved or high‑mortality areas.
Why It Matters
The legislation ties federal convening, grant dollars, and research to maternal health technology — a combination that can change clinical workflows, reimbursement discussions, and data-sharing practices. For compliance officers and program managers, it creates new federal reporting, evaluation, and technical-assistance expectations to operationalize telehealth and digital tools in maternity care.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill takes a three‑pronged approach. First, it authorizes federal demonstration models to explicitly include telehealth tools for screening, monitoring, and managing pregnancy-related complications, extending coverage and program focus into the postpartum year.
Second, it creates targeted grant funding and technical assistance to develop and scale technology-enabled collaborative learning models that train clinicians, disseminate best practices, and evaluate outcomes in high-need geographies and populations. Third, it tasks an external expert body with studying the effects of clinical technologies and monitoring devices (including artificial intelligence and commonly used sensors) on maternal care and racial and ethnic biases.
Concretely, the grant program for collaborative learning is written into the Public Health Service Act with defined required activities: training modules on safety and quality, implicit bias and racism, screening and treatment of perinatal mental health and substance use disorders, best practices for care during public health emergencies, social‑determinant screening, and the use of remote patient monitoring. The statute also makes evaluation and data collection a statutory requirement and authorizes HHS to provide technical assistance and coordinate on broadband access for grantees.A separate grant track funds the adoption of digital tools that directly support clinical decision‑making — early‑warning systems, clinical decision support, and analytics that sift large datasets for pregnancy risks.
Both grant tracks are narrowly targeted to high‑need areas and populations (health professional shortage areas, rural and underserved communities, medically underserved populations, and American Indian and Alaska Native communities) and include reporting obligations intended to inform best practices and policy recommendations.Finally, the bill requires HHS to seek an agreement with the National Academies to study how emerging technologies and patient monitoring devices affect care and bias, and to issue a report with recommendations on clinical use, privacy and security safeguards, reimbursement, interstate telehealth barriers, and data‑sharing challenges. That study is intended to feed back into grant prioritization, evaluation metrics, and federal guidance for scaling these technologies in maternal care.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill amends the Social Security Act demonstration authority by adding a provision that permits telehealth tools for screening, monitoring, and managing pregnancy‑related complications and explicitly covers care for up to one year after the pregnancy ends.
It creates a new Public Health Service Act program (section 330Q) that funds technology‑enabled collaborative learning models, requires grantees to train clinicians on safety, bias, mental‑health screening, and remote monitoring, and mandates evaluation and reporting on access, quality, outcomes, and provider retention.
The collaborative‑learning grant is limited to a single award for a five‑year period and includes statutory authority for HHS to provide technical assistance and coordinate broadband support for grantees.
A separate grant program funds adoption of provider‑facing digital tools (early warning systems and clinical decision support); that program also caps awards to a single five‑year grant and requires the Secretary to report to Congress with recommendations on privacy, reimbursement, data sharing, and barriers to telehealth.
The Secretary must seek a National Academies study on the use of clinical technologies and monitoring devices (explicitly including artificial intelligence and pulse oximeters) and deliver a report to Congress within 24 months with best practices to mitigate racial and ethnic biases and privacy/security guidance.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title
Names the legislation the ‘Tech to Save Moms Act.’ This is the formal title used in federal references and does not create substantive obligations.
CMMI/1115A authority to include maternal telehealth and postpartum monitoring
Adds an explicit clause authorizing demonstration models under federal innovation authority to adopt telehealth tools for screening, monitoring, and managing common pregnancy‑related complications and extends that coverage through the postpartum year. Practically, this gives the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (or related demonstration processes) the statutory language to propose and test models focused on Medicaid maternity care with remote patient monitoring as a covered element.
Grant for technology‑enabled collaborative learning and capacity building
Creates a grant program targeted at health professional shortage areas, rural/underserved locations, high‑mortality areas, medically underserved populations, and tribal entities. The statute enumerates required uses (training on safety, implicit bias, perinatal mental health and substance use, remote monitoring), evaluation and data collection duties, permissible uses (hardware/software to enable distance learning and secure EHI exchange), and provides for HHS technical assistance. The text caps awards to one grant for a five‑year period and includes an authorization of appropriations for a multi‑year funding stream.
Grant to expand provider‑facing digital tools for equity
Directs HHS to award a second, separate grant to increase access to digital clinical tools (e.g., early warning systems, clinical decision support) with prioritization for areas with elevated maternal mortality or staffing shortages. Like the collaborative‑learning grant, it is time‑limited to five years and includes reporting obligations that require the Secretary to evaluate effectiveness and make policy recommendations on privacy, reimbursement, interstate telehealth barriers, and consumer digital tool use.
Independent study by the National Academies on clinical technologies and monitoring devices
Requires HHS to seek an agreement with the National Academies to study how innovative technologies (including AI) and patient monitoring devices affect maternal care and racial/ethnic biases, and to recommend best practices and privacy/security safeguards. The study’s scope explicitly calls out pulse oximeters and asks for guidance on reducing bias and improving clinical use; the report is due to Congress within 24 months.
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Explore Healthcare in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Pregnant and postpartum individuals in health professional shortage areas and rural/underserved communities — they stand to gain increased access to screening, remote monitoring, and provider decision support in the prenatal and first year postpartum period, which targets the period of highest maternal risk.
- Tribal health programs and American Indian/Alaska Native communities — statutory prioritization and eligibility language direct grant resources, technical assistance, and training toward tribes, tribal organizations, and Urban Indian organizations.
- Maternity care clinicians and health systems in targeted areas — they receive funded training, connection to collaborative learning networks, and technical assistance designed to improve clinical quality, reduce bias, and build capacity to use remote monitoring.
- Telehealth and digital‑health vendors — the law creates demand signals for remote patient monitoring, secure EHI exchange tools, clinical decision support, and distance learning platforms; grantee procurement is an entry point to scale.
- Researchers and public‑health agencies — the statutory evaluation and a National Academies study will produce standardized measures, evidence, and recommended best practices that can be used to shape future policy and funding.
Who Bears the Cost
- Grantees and participating health systems — they will need to implement technology, integrate devices with clinical workflows and EHRs, train staff, and sustain systems after the five‑year period; capital and operational costs fall largely on providers unless additional funding is secured.
- HHS and program administrators — the department must manage grant competitions, provide technical assistance, coordinate broadband and interagency actions, and compile multi‑year evaluations and reports, creating administrative burden and requiring staffing and systems.
- State Medicaid programs and demonstration partners — demonstrations using the amended federal authority may require state coordination, data sharing, and potential changes to how Medicaid covers maternal telehealth services.
- Small and rural clinics — although prioritized, these providers may struggle to adopt required hardware/software and to meet reporting and evaluation expectations without significant implementation support.
- Vendors and implementers tasked with privacy/security compliance — recommendations and reporting may raise the bar for safeguards, interoperability, and data governance, increasing development and compliance costs.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between targeted innovation and broad, sustainable scale: the bill seeks to rapidly expand technology in the most underserved maternal‑health settings, yet concentrates resources into short‑term, single grantees and relies on later study and recommendations to address privacy, bias, reimbursement, and interstate practice barriers — creating a real risk that pilots improve conditions for some while leaving long‑term access, funding, and equity unresolved for others.
The bill intentionally piles three tools together — demonstration authority, competitive grants, and an expert study — but the design choices generate tradeoffs. Concentrating funds into single five‑year grants creates an opportunity for a well‑resourced demonstration to produce rigorous evidence, yet it centralizes risk: one award winner determines the model, geography, and partners, which may leave many high‑need communities without direct investment.
The statutory requirement to evaluate and report is a strength, but outcomes will hinge on the quality of metrics, data sharing agreements, and EHR interoperability — all of which are uneven across safety‑net systems.
Privacy, data governance, and equity tensions run through the bill. It expressly prioritizes groups that have experienced worse outcomes, but the efficacy of remote monitoring depends on broadband and device access; without robust broadband investment and post‑grant sustainability planning, technology could widen rather than close disparities.
The National Academies study requirement recognizes risks about bias in AI and monitoring devices (pulse oximeters are specifically flagged), but translating study recommendations into regulatory or reimbursement changes is a separate policy and budgetary step not contained in this bill.
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