6 Houston-area hospitals named top-performing maternity care options by U.S. News & World Report

December 8, 2025

Six Houston-area hospitals were named among the top maternity care providers in the country, ranking the Bayou City in the top 20 U.S. cities with the most high-quality maternity care options.

The hospitals U.S. News & World Report evaluated for its "2026 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care" ratings, included 15 in the Houston metro area, the majority of which are located in Harris County. The area's six “high-performing” maternity care hospitals are:

• Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital
• University of Texas Medical Branch
• Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital
• Houston Methodist Clear Lake Hospital
• Memorial Hermann Greater Heights Hospital
• Texas Children's Hospital

The metro area with the most high-performing hospitals is New York City with 39, and the Texas metro area with the most is Dallas-Fort Worth, which has 12. Houston's six high-performing hospitals tied with Charlotte, North Carolina; Cincinnati; Detroit; Seattle; and Indianapolis.

U.S. News identified high-performing hospitals through a survey collected in the summer. Out of the 2,582 eligible hospitals nationwide, 901 submitted survey responses for the U.S. News ranking.

Several of the Houston-area honorees have received other recognition this year for their quality of care. Houston Methodist’s Baytown, Clear Lake and Willowbrook hospitals were all named alongside several other Methodist campuses in Premier’s Top 100 Hospitals lists in April.

Meanwhile, Texas Children’s was named among the best children’s hospitals in the country by U.S. News, an honor it has maintained for several years.

Several Houston-area counties identified as 'maternity care deserts'

The U.S. News rankings also include a new designation of “Maternity Care Access Hospital,” which the publication said is intended to recognize hospitals operating in “maternity care deserts.” The nonprofit March of Dimes defines a maternity care desert as an area where there are no hospitals or birth centers offering obstetric care and no obstetric providers.

Houston has no Maternity Care Access Hospitals on the new list.

Patients who lack access to obstetric care often have poorer health before pregnancy, receive less prenatal care and experience higher rates of preterm birth, according to a March of Dimes analysis.

Harris County and most of its populous neighbors — Montgomery, Galveston and Fort Bend counties — have high levels of access to maternity care, according to the March of Dimes website.

But those resources are stretched farther out. Fast-growing Waller County earned a “maternity care desert” designation, and Chambers and Liberty counties are classified as “low access to care.”

Houston-area hospital systems have eyed those communities for future growth, however. In July, Memorial Hermann Health System said it had acquired 40 acres of land in Waller, approximately 17 miles north of the system’s current hospital in Cypress.