Fewer than half of rural hospitals have labor and delivery units and the number keeps dropping
Alisha Alderson placed her folded clothes and everything she needed for the last month of her pregnancy in various suitcases. She never imagined she would have to leave the comfort of her home in rural eastern Oregon just weeks before her due date. But following the abrupt closure in August of the only maternity ward within 40 miles, she decided to stay at her brother’s house near Boise, Idaho — a two-hour drive through a mountain pass — to be closer to a hospital.
“Moms have complications everywhere. Babies have complications everywhere,” said Dr. Eric Scott Palmer, a neonatologist who practiced at Henry County Medical Center in rural Tennessee before it ended obstetric services this month. “There will be people hurt. It’s not a question of if — simply when.”The issue has been building for years: The American Hospital Association says at least 89 obstetric units closed in rural hospitals between 2015 and 2019. More have shuttered since.
While they said financial concerns didn’t factor into the decision, they underlined that the unit had operated in the red over the last 10 years. Lacy Kee, who was visiting the ward, said she’ll have to drive 45 minutes and cross the state line into Kentucky to give birth to her third child in early October. She’s especially concerned because she has gestational diabetes and recently had a scare with her fetus’ heart rate.
The closure “makes me absolutely want to cry,” said O’Brien, 31. “It’s a horrible thing for our community. Any young person looking to move here won’t want to come. Why would you want to come somewhere where you can’t have a baby safely?”About two hours away, inside a house in the woods, a handful of women sat in a circle on pillows for a prenatal group meeting at The Farm Midwifery Center, a storied place in Summertown, Tennessee, that’s more than a half-century old.
“The kinds of lifesaving procedures that can only be conducted in a hospital are important for those very high-risk cases,” McGregor said. “But for the majority of pregnancies, which are low-risk, birth centers can be a very important solution to lowering costs within the U.S. health care system and improving outcomes.”
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