Roseland Community Hospital suspends labor and delivery Saturday, with no date to reopen

Roseland Community Hospital on Chicago’s Far South Side will suspend its labor and delivery department on Saturday, Oct. 31, and has not set a date to reopen it, hospital staff told Block Club Chicago.^{1, 2}

The hospital, at 45 W. 111th St., is a safety-net hospital that serves patients regardless of their ability to pay.¹ NBC Chicago first reported the plan in late September, citing an internal report from hospital administrators that described severe financial pressures.² “We can’t put the whole entire hospital at risk just for one department,” an administrator said in that report, according to NBC.²

The hospital’s explanation

Chief Executive Tim Egan said in a statement that the administration “fought a battle every day for 14 years to keep labor and delivery open in spite of tremendous odds,” Block Club reported.¹ He said the suspension was not made “by choice.”¹

“It is the result of decades of historical underfunding of safety-net hospitals that have made it impossible to sustain services that this community depends on and deserves,” Egan said.¹

The hospital received a $16 million state grant earlier this year to help make payroll, NBC reported.² In July, it also received an advance payment from Cook County’s Medicaid program to meet payroll, Block Club reported, citing Crain’s Chicago Business.¹

Administrators sent their report to state hospital regulators as part of a “Strategic Transformation” plan, according to NBC.² The report said the hospital would keep an obstetrics clinic open, and administrators asked the state to help expand high-risk maternal care at an inpatient facility, the station reported.²

Where patients will go

The nearest hospitals with labor and delivery units are Stroger Hospital, Trinity Hospital, the UChicago Family Birth Center and UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, all more than 4 miles away, according to Block Club.¹ Many Roseland patients walk to the hospital or are dropped off rather than calling an ambulance, said Courtney Reeves, a registered nurse in the department.¹

Staff have been meeting with patients to tell them services end after Oct. 31 and to connect them with another hospital for their deliveries, Reeves told Block Club.¹ “They’re still going to need to come to Roseland,” she said.¹

Reeves said the emergency room and the detox unit, which treats some pregnant patients, will now have to handle obstetric emergencies without an obstetrician on call.¹ “This isn’t just a labor and delivery thing,” she said.¹

Kimberly Hobson, chief executive of Thrive South Side, a nonprofit of 13 health care organizations serving Medicaid and uninsured patients, said the group has begun talks with larger hospitals in the area about guiding patients through the change.¹ Those talks need to become “coordinated action,” she told Block Club.¹

Other maternity closures

Roseland is one of several Chicago-area hospitals cutting maternity care this fall.^{1, 2} Prime Healthcare said in September it would end obstetrics at three of its hospitals, including Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago and St. Joseph’s in Joliet, citing financial pressures and a declining birth rate in Will County, NBC reported.^{1, 2}

An Illinois Department of Public Health report found that Black women in Illinois were more than twice as likely as white women to die from any pregnancy-related condition, and that more than 91 percent of maternal deaths were potentially preventable, Block Club reported.¹ The hospital serves a large population of Black women, Reeves said.¹