WILLOUHGBY, Ohio — Expectant mothers in Lake County can expect changes to where they’re able to deliver their babies. On Saturday, University Hospitals Lake West Medical Center is ending its labor and delivery services.
The move is part of planned consolidations and upgrades across the hospital system. Labor and delivery services from Lake West will transition to UH TriPoint Medical Center in Concord. This summer, the hospital system will open an additional delivery site at UH Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood.
“We really wanted to make sure we were consolidating our delivery services to sites where we could have a higher volume,” said Robyn Strosaker, MD, FAAP, President and Chief Operating Officer of UH Lake Health Medical Centers.
She said the declining birth rate in Northeast Ohio, as elsewhere in the country, influenced the consolidation, explaining busier labor and delivery units have better patient outcomes.
Tiffany Shaffer was disappointed to hear Lake West was discontinuing its labor and delivery unit. She delivered all three of her sons at the hospital and had hoped to eventually have a fourth child there.
“I lived in Willoughby for my first two pregnancies. And then my third, it just didn’t seem right to go anywhere else,” she said.
Shaffer chose to drive more than an hour from Andover to Lake West to be induced for her third son’s birth because of her previous positive experiences, but she knows an extended drive may not be an option for other families.
Both Ahuja and TriPoint are about 15 miles, or a 20-minute drive, from Lake West.
“It doesn’t seem like it’s that big of a deal, but if you’re in labor and something’s wrong, that extra 20 minutes down the freeway could be disastrous,” she said.
Other hospital systems have made similar consolidations recently, including OhioHealth’s Shelby Hospital in Richland County. It suspended its labor and delivery services in February.
The move happens as the CDC reports more new mothers dying in the U.S. than in any other industrialized nation.
Dr. Strosaker said UH is seeing more expectant mothers with compounding medical issues, like diabetes and high blood pressure. In response, the hospital system is upgrading both TriPoint and Ahuja to level 2 maternal hospitals so they’re better equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies and births. The UH main campus in downtown Cleveland was previously the system’s only high-level option.
“It really was a matter of - where can we have our delivery sites in the community that are going to best serve the community? That was really the conceding point between these two sites, the TriPoint site and the Ahuja site,” said Dr. Strosaker.
Shaffer currently lives in Ashtabula County, which the March of Dimes reports is among 11.4 percent of U.S. counties with low access to maternity care. Nearly 35 percent of counties are considered maternity care deserts.
She said she’s lucky to be able to drive elsewhere for access to care and knows it can be stressful adapting birth plans, even in best-case scenarios.
“It just would be crazy to be like, ‘Oh you can’t give birth at this hospital now,’” she said.
UH is investing $25.5 million at Lake West and TriPoint. The majority of the money will fund an overhaul at Lake West, with renovations of the surgery center, new cardiac and vascular lab and an endoscopy/bronchoscopy suite. The birthing center at TriPoint is being renovated and a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) added.
Lake West’s labor and delivery staff will be able to transfer to other facilities in the system.
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