Pomelo Care Publishes Peer-Reviewed Research Linking Virtual Maternity Care to Improved Outcomes and Reduced NICU Utilization

Peer-reviewed outcomes data establish a 'dose-response' relationship in Pomelo's program, showing that technology-enabled medical care drives significant reductions in preterm births, NICU utilization, and costs, along with earlier identification of pregnancy risk

NEW YORK, March 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Pomelo Care, the national leader in evidence-based healthcare for women and children, unveiled peer-reviewed outcomes data from four new studies conducted in collaboration with the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn LDI), presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) 2026 Pregnancy Meeting in February, with the flagship study published in SMFM's Pregnancy journal. The research examines how Pomelo's technology-enabled virtual maternity program surfaces hidden pregnancy risk and improves maternal and neonatal outcomes.

Collectively, the research challenges the digital health industry's reliance on surface-level engagement metrics, such as app downloads and content views, and on self-reported data. Instead, Pomelo analyzed administrative claims data to evaluate outcomes across tens of thousands of patients. These studies demonstrate that virtual maternity care, powered by proprietary technology, fully employed care teams, and deep data integration, can identify risks earlier, improve outcomes, and reduce costs.

Dose-Response to Care

The flagship study published in SMFM's Pregnancy journal analyzed administrative claims data from six large health plans across six states, encompassing nearly 45,000 deliveries. Researchers employed causal inference methods, including doubly robust estimation with propensity score weighting, to isolate the program's impact from underlying patient characteristics.

The results revealed statistically significant improvements beginning in the first month of engagement and compounding with sustained care. Patients engaged prenatally for three months or longer experienced the greatest improvements, including a 24.4% reduction in preterm births and a more than 26% reduction in NICU length of stay. These findings show a consistent dose-response trend: preterm birth reductions increase from 11.0% after one month of engagement to 17.2% after two months and 24.4% after 3 months, with NICU admission reductions and cost following the same pattern.

This provides strong evidence that the care itself produces the benefit, with each additional month of Pomelo's clinical management creating more opportunities to detect emerging complications and intervene before they escalate. Many pregnancy complications, including gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes, and perinatal mood disorders, develop and evolve over weeks. Pomelo's fully employed care teams, drawing on real-time HIE, and remote patient monitoring data, identify and close the specific care gaps that drive these complications for each patient.

Because outcomes were measured on administrative claims, the observed reductions in NICU utilization translate directly into measurable, near-term savings for health plans and employers.

Identifying "Invisible" Risk in Payer Populations

A second study presented at SMFM examined an important challenge for employers and health plans: identifying risk among members with limited or no prior claims history. Pomelo analyzed outcomes for thousands of first-time mothers with no documented pre-pregnancy claims, a profile often interpreted as low-risk based.

Despite appearing healthy early in pregnancy, this group was found to have a 42% higher likelihood of developing hypertensive disorders of pregnancy compared to individuals with established claims history, even after adjusting for demographic factors. These findings suggest that reliance on historical claims data can obscure clinically meaningful risk.

"The bar for proving clinical effectiveness in healthcare is clear: you must show that your intervention, not patient selection, is driving results," said Marta Bralic Kerns, founder and CEO of Pomelo Care. "Our analysis of claims data shows that the more families engage with Pomelo, the better their outcomes become, beginning in the first month and improving over time. That is possible because we built Pomelo differently, with fully employed clinicians supported by integrated technology and real-time clinical data that help us continuously identify and close the care gaps that lead to complications. Employers and health plans deserve clear proof that a program works and a transparent understanding of how those results are achieved."

Pomelo's model leverages multiple data sources to construct a clear picture across a patient population. Clinical risk evolves throughout pregnancy, meaning a healthy patient can quickly develop complications at any point. To catch this rising risk, Pomelo continuously surfaces early clinical signals to its providers. Catching and treating this invisible risk early is what ultimately drives better clinical outcomes and payer savings.

Together, this new research reinforces the value of technology-enabled maternity care that identifies risk earlier, improves outcomes, and reduces cost at scale for health plans, employers, and patients.

About Pomelo Care

Pomelo Care is the national leader in evidence-based healthcare for women and children. We deliver personalized, high-quality clinical interventions from reproductive care and pregnancy, infant care and pediatrics, to hormonal health through perimenopause and menopause, with long-term preventive care and condition management. Our model delivers 24/7 multispecialty care to address the medical, behavioral, and social factors that most significantly impact outcomes for women and children. We partner with payers, employers, and providers to expand access to quality healthcare across the system. Learn more at pomelocare.com.

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SOURCE Pomelo Care