Beginning January 1, 2027, the traditional global maternity CPT codes will be deleted and replaced by more granular reporting across four phases of care: antepartum care, labor management, delivery and postpartum care. Antepartum and postpartum visits will generally be reported individually using evaluation and management codes, while new codes will distinguish labor management and delivery services. (American Medical Association)
The change is intended to better reflect modern, team-based maternity care and create greater transparency into what services patients receive throughout pregnancy and postpartum. But for OB/GYN groups, it also raises an immediate operational question:
How do you reliably capture, document and support every encounter when maternity care is no longer represented by one global code?
Phreesia helps OB/GYN groups reduce friction throughout the maternity journey—from helping patients schedule the right visit to collecting accurate registration information, administering screenings and collecting payments. Those capabilities can help practices build the consistent front-end workflows they will need as maternity care reporting becomes more granular.
1. Help patients schedule—and complete—the right encounters
Under the global model, a series of maternity visits could be represented by one bundled code. Beginning in 2027, antepartum and postpartum care will be visible at the individual encounter level. This may make missed, delayed or incorrectly scheduled visits more consequential for care continuity, documentation and revenue.
Phreesia can help OB/GYN groups:
- Send targeted outreach for prenatal and postpartum care
- Let patients self-schedule based on practice-defined rules
- Match patients with the appropriate appointment type, provider and location
- Send automated reminders and offer earlier appointments when openings arise
- Reduce the manual work required to manage calls and appointment requests
This can be particularly important during postpartum care, when practices may need to engage patients across more than one encounter rather than relying on a single six-week visit. The new coding structure is designed to support more transparent reporting across postpartum care, while Medicaid coverage has expanded through 12 months postpartum in participating states. (Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health)
“Phreesia helps us maintain a full schedule and engage our patients without any work from our staff. We don’t have to worry about cancellations anymore, and our patients love getting earlier appointments.”
2. Treat every registration as a revenue-cycle event
As maternity care moves from a single global code to encounter-level reporting, each visit will create its own opportunity for accurate—or inaccurate—data capture.
That makes front-end registration even more important. Practices will need current demographic and insurance information connected to the appropriate patient, visit and coverage period. Missing or outdated information can create downstream rework when teams are managing a greater number of separately reported services.
Phreesia helps patients review or update their demographic information and insurance coverage before each visit. Eligibility and benefits tools can also help teams identify coverage issues earlier, while integrations can transfer updated information into existing systems.
The principle is simple: more reportable encounters require more consistently clean registration.
3. Standardize encounter-specific intake and documentation
The 2027 framework will create more detailed visibility into maternity care across antepartum, labor, delivery and postpartum phases. The AMA says the changes are intended to improve transparency, data quality, measurement and attribution across the pregnancy journey. (American Medical Association)
To support that level of reporting, OB/GYN groups will need workflows that consistently collect the right information for the right encounter.
Phreesia’s configurable intake can help practices:
- Present forms and questions based on appointment type or stage of care
- Capture updated medical, family and social histories
- Collect financial policies and other required consents electronically
- Prompt patients to complete information before arriving
- Monitor completion and identify registration exceptions
- Transfer patient-reported information into connected clinical and administrative systems
This does not replace coding review or clinical documentation. It helps ensure that the patient-facing and administrative information supporting each encounter is collected consistently and available to the appropriate team.
4. Expand maternal mental health and risk screening workflows
More granular maternity reporting creates an opportunity to make previously obscured care more visible—including screening and follow-up for maternal mental health needs.
The Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health recommends screening during pregnancy and multiple times throughout the postpartum period, along with clear payer guidance on billing and reimbursement. The organization also notes that unbundling creates an opportunity to extend coordinated support throughout the full postpartum year. (Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health)
Phreesia can administer validated screeners as part of digital intake, including the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Practices can configure patients to receive the appropriate screening based on their visit or stage of care, making screening a repeatable part of the workflow rather than a separate manual task.
Patient-reported data can also help teams identify social and behavioral health needs privately before the encounter, giving clinicians more time to review results, discuss concerns and determine appropriate next steps.
What this can look like
A postpartum patient receives an automated reminder, self-schedules the appropriate visit and completes registration from home. Because the visit is postpartum, she is prompted to complete the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale before she arrives. Her care team can review the information and focus the encounter on her clinical needs.
5. Prepare for greater payment and patient-responsibility complexity
The move away from the global maternity code may also change how and when patient responsibility is calculated, communicated and collected. Actual effects will vary by payer contracts, benefit designs and implementation policies, so practices should begin working with payers well before January 2027.
Operationally, OB/GYN groups may need to manage:
- More encounter-specific eligibility checks
- More frequent estimates or explanations of patient responsibility
- Additional copay or balance collection opportunities
- Questions from patients accustomed to maternity care being presented as a bundle
- Reconciliation across a larger number of separately reported services
Phreesia supports eligibility and benefits verification, pre-visit and time-of-service payments, card-on-file options, payment plans, digital bills and automated payment reminders. These tools can help practices give patients more convenient ways to manage their financial responsibility while reducing manual work for staff.
Because payer approaches may differ, clear financial policies and patient communication will be essential. Practices should avoid assuming that CPT unbundling will create the same cost-sharing experience across all plans.
6. Give staff visibility into a more complex patient journey
Moving from one global maternity code to potentially dozens of separately reported services creates additional administrative overhead. The Policy Center specifically warns that independent and rural OB clinics may feel this burden most acutely because they already operate with constrained staffing and margins. (Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health)
Technology cannot eliminate every coding or reimbursement challenge, but it can prevent avoidable manual work from compounding it.
Phreesia gives teams visibility into scheduling, registration status, eligibility, outstanding intake tasks, payments and patient-reported information. Standardizing those workflows across providers and locations can reduce variation and help staff identify what needs attention before it becomes downstream rework.
The goal is not simply to digitize today’s processes. It is to create an operating model that can support a higher volume of discrete maternity encounters without placing every additional task on front-office and revenue-cycle teams.
What OB/GYN leaders can do now
January 2027 may feel far away, but the change touches clinical, operational and financial workflows. ACOG recommends that health plans begin transitioning from global obstetric payment to unrestricted antepartum E/M reporting no later than September 1, 2026, to reduce administrative disruption and incorrect billing. (ACOG)
OB/GYN leaders can begin preparing by:
- Mapping the maternity journey. Identify every antepartum, delivery and postpartum encounter—and how patients currently schedule, register and complete required information for each one.
- Reviewing payer readiness. Ask commercial and Medicaid plans how they will configure reimbursement, edits, cost sharing and maternity-specific E/M reporting.
- Evaluating front-end data quality. Determine whether insurance, demographics and consents are being refreshed consistently or copied forward from older records.
- Standardizing encounter workflows. Define which forms, screeners, consents and payment steps should appear for each maternity appointment type.
- Planning patient communication. Prepare to explain why billing statements, copays or estimates may look different under the new framework.
- Measuring staff impact. Estimate how additional encounters could affect scheduling, registration, eligibility verification, payment collection and patient calls.
From one bundle to a connected maternity journey
The end of the global maternity codes represents more than a coding update. It changes the operational unit of maternity care—from one bundled episode to a connected series of individually visible encounters.
OB/GYN groups that prepare only at the billing stage may find that problems have already occurred upstream. A missed appointment, outdated insurance record, incomplete screening or inconsistent registration process can affect both the patient experience and the revenue cycle.
Phreesia helps practices build reliable workflows across the full journey: engaging patients, scheduling appropriate care, collecting accurate information, administering screenings and supporting payments. That foundation can help OB/GYN groups adapt to the 2027 changes while keeping their focus where it belongs—on patients and their care.
Frequently asked questions about the 2027 maternity-care coding changes
Effective January 1, 2027, the traditional global maternity CPT codes will be deleted. Maternity care will instead be reported more granularly across antepartum care, labor management, delivery and postpartum care. Antepartum and postpartum encounters will generally use E/M reporting, while new codes will apply to labor management and delivery. (American Medical Association)
Not necessarily. CPT codes define how services are reported, but payer contracts, fee schedules, claims policies and benefit designs determine reimbursement and patient responsibility. Practices should confirm implementation details with each payer.
Each separately reported encounter will depend on accurate patient, insurance and visit information. Consistently refreshing that information can reduce downstream corrections, eligibility issues and payment delays.
Phreesia supports patient outreach, scheduling, digital registration, eligibility and benefits workflows, configurable forms and screenings, consent capture, payment collection and operational reporting. These capabilities can help groups standardize the patient-facing and administrative workflows surrounding each maternity encounter.
Phreesia should not be positioned as replacing an organization’s coding, billing or compliance processes. It supports the upstream workflows and patient-reported data that help clinical, administrative and revenue-cycle teams manage each encounter more consistently.
Need help navigating the move beyond the maternity bundle?
Phreesia is here to help you adapt your workflows, communicate clearly with patients and keep operations running smoothly as maternity care moves beyond the global bundle.
