Massachusetts General Hospital has phased in several new initiatives during the past few months designed to encourage pregnant women to go into labor naturally with fewer medical interventions and, hopefully, lower costs and fewer C-sections. The labor and delivery unit’s obstetricians, nurses, and midwives — all on staff at the hospital — have agreed to end elective inductions, which are usually scheduled ahead of time for the convenience of doctor or patient and without a medical reason. Medical reasons to induce childbirth include high blood pressure or diabetes in the mother or a growth problem in the baby.

Women whose water has broken but who haven’t started contractions have recently been given the option to return home to get another night of rest — rather than being given drugs to induce contractions — to see if labor will start naturally.

“We’ve pulled out all the stops to try to decrease our induction rate to only when it’s a medical necessity,” said Dr. Laura Riley, Mass. General’s medical director of labor and delivery, though the hospital still schedules a handful of inductions for nonmedical reasons each month. The new policy could help lower the hospital’s 30 percent C-section rate, since studies suggest that scheduled inductions sometimes lead to prolonged, nonprogressing labors that necessitate surgery. But other factors contributing to the steady C-section rise — older mothers with riskier pregnancies, multiple births, and bigger babies — might be impossible to reduce.

Another aim of the hospital’s new rules, Riley said, is to shorten the time a pregnant woman spends laboring in the hospital, which can free up beds and save on health care costs. Women who go into labor naturally tend to spend about 10.5 hours in the labor and delivery unit compared with 22 hours for women whose labor is induced.

After Melissa Turner’s water had broken last month and her contractions hadn’t yet started, she jumped at the chance to return home to see if her labor would start on its own. When Turner, 37, returned to Mass. General the next morning, she still wasn’t in labor. The mother now of a healthy 4-week-old daughter said she doesn’t regret waiting.

“I had the opportunity to see if my labor would begin naturally,” Turner said, “so when I did get the pitocin [a hormone to trigger contractions] I felt more peaceful about it.”

While it’s too soon to say whether the hospital’s new policies will lower the rate of C-sections, free up beds in the labor and delivery unit, and save on health care costs, similar efforts have produced striking results when implemented elsewhere.

At Intermountain Healthcare, a system of 22 hospitals based mainly in Utah, policies banning elective inductions have been in place for more than a decade, leading to a drop in the rate of C-sections from 28 percent to about 21 percent and a cost savings of $50 million a year to Utah, according to chief quality officer Dr. Brent James.

Hospitals earn more for C-sections; in Massachusetts, they charge an average of $13,400 compared with $9,700 for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery.

The Intermountain hospital system, which handles 34,000 deliveries a year, experienced no rise in death rates or serious complications in mothers or babies after putting its policies into effect. “In most cases, we’ve found that when you improve the quality of care,” said James, “the costs also decline.” He conceded that Intermountain sees a high percentage of young mothers who are in good health.

Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge has a C-section rate of about 23 percent, one of the lowest in the state, and a few years ago implemented many of the same policies Mass. General is now trying. Much of Mt. Auburn’s success can be attributed to the patients, said Dr. Ed Huang, chair of obstetrics-gynecology at the hospital. “We have patients who don’t want an operative intervention. Fewer than half get epidurals for pain relief compared to 70 to 80 percent at other hospitals.”