“Across the country, rural hospitals have experienced ongoing challenges in ensuring sustainable access to high-quality obstetrics services. Locally, Parkview Health has always focused on high-quality care, and will soon begin a new approach to ensure long-term access to services for moms and babies throughout our region.
Research shows that ensuring the accessibility of high-quality prenatal and postnatal care is essential to the health of moms and babies. In September, we will begin implementing a new care model with that goal in mind. We will enhance prenatal and postnatal care in all the communities we serve – particularly those in rural areas – while also ensuring access to labor and delivery at many of our hospitals.
Parkview will continue to offer labor and delivery services at Family Birthing Centers in five hospitals throughout the region: Parkview Huntington Hospital, Parkview Noble Hospital, Parkview Whitley Hospital, Parkview Hospital Randallia and the Parkview Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Labor and delivery services are also available in Bryan, Ohio, at Community Hospitals and Wellness Centers, which will join Parkview Health in October, and we are investing in a new Family Birthing Center at Parkview Kosciusko Hospital in 2024. Parkview Wabash Hospital does not offer labor and delivery.
Although this means that labor and delivery will no longer be available at Parkview DeKalb Hospital or Parkview LaGrange Hospital, these services will be available at other nearby Parkview hospitals to ensure continuity of care.
To ensure a seamless transition, Parkview has already begun contacting expecting mothers to coordinate their care plans and tour nearby Parkview Family Birthing Centers. All impacted Family Birthing Center co-workers will be offered similar roles within the health system.
Our unwavering commitment to healthy moms and babies is at the heart of this new approach. We strive to provide the highest quality of care, and this model creates new opportunities to optimize prenatal care, labor and delivery, and postnatal care. All to better serve our communities.”
