Newton Medical Center to close birthing unit, furthering Iowa's maternity care shortage

The hospital in Newton will halt labor and delivery care later this year.

MercyOne Newton Medical Center will pause birthing services indefinitely after Oct. 15, hospital officials announced Friday.

That means many residents of Newton, about 35 miles from downtown Des Moines, will be forced to travel out-of-town to give birth. There are no other labor and delivery care centers in Jasper County, which has a population of about 32,000.

The decision comes after Newton Clinic, the partnering medical group that supplies physicians to the hospital, announced it would no longer continue efforts to recruit obstetric-gynecologists and other physicians trained to offer labor and delivery care.

MercyOne does not directly employ any physicians but instead relies on partner medical groups for staffing.

Newton Clinic ended its recruitment efforts after "a decade of significant recruitment and physician workforce challenges," officials said in its press release Friday.

Newton Clinic administrator Mark Thayer said over the past decade, the hospital's labor and delivery unit has relied on physicians able to offer Cesarean sections, or C-sections, to its patients who need the surgical procedure. Those physicians have retired or departed for other positions in recent years.

But as the medical group has worked to replace that staff, officials have found it has become harder to find and recruit physicians who have enough training to offer that level of care. Thayer said one of the clinic's OB-GYNs is leaving in October for personal reasons, leaving just one physician on staff capable of offering C-sections, which is not a sustainable model.

“It's not safe to labor a patient without being able to do a C-section within 30 minutes," Thayer said. "Those are the standard-of-care requirements, and a lot of organizations in rural communities have found themselves in a situation where they can't provide or guarantee that they can labor patients safely without having that.”

Thayer said the closing of Newton's labor and delivery ward is symbolic of challenges faced across Iowa. Since 2000, more than 40 Iowa hospitals — or about a third of hospitals in the state — have shuttered their labor and delivery units.

As a result, about 33% of Iowa counties are defined as "maternity care deserts" because of their lack of labor and delivery wards as well as availability of maternity care providers, according to a March of Dimes report .

This trend also has played out in other states across the country. It's estimated 57% of rural hospitals in the U.S. do not offer labor and delivery care, with even more facilities at risk of losing maternity care in the coming years.

“It's what the reality is,” Thayer said. “I wish it wasn’t, because both of my kids were born at this hospital. I've taken a lot of pride in our clinic that has been in operation almost 100 years, and we provided (obstetric) services for all those of 100 years. To close the service on my watch is very painful for me.”

Researchers have raised alarms about the closure of rural maternity wards, saying reduced access is tied to poor health outcomes for women. The March of Dimes report says the farther a patient travels to access maternal care, "the greater the risk of maternal morbidity and adverse infant outcomes, such as stillbirth and NICU admission."

After Oct. 15, MercyOne officials say they will investigate other care models to provide obstetric care in rural areas. Women expected to deliver before Oct. 15 can still give birth at MercyOne's Newton hospital and will "continue to have the excellent care they've been receiving."

Those patients expected to deliver after Oct. 15 will be transitioned to another birthing facility.

Newton Clinic is encouraging those women to continue their scheduled prenatal care appointments at their facility. Thayer said the medical group is still exploring options to continue offering prenatal and postpartum care to patients in Newton and Jasper County for the foreseeable future.

Nurses employed within the labor and delivery unit at MercyOne Newton Medical Center will be offered employment in other departments, officials say.

"As difficult as this decision is, patient safety is of utmost importance to both organizations," the statement from health officials reads. "Both Newton Clinic and MercyOne Newton Medical Center will continue to commit to the high standards of prescribed and emergency care followed by every care center in Iowa. Appropriate hospital policies and procedures, along with interfacility arrangements, are in place to safely care for and triage all patients."

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said Friday the news was "devastating" to Iowa women and families. She pointed to recent laws passed by the Iowa-controlled Legislature as a contributing factor to the state's challenges in recruiting physicians, including the six-week abortion ban that recently went into effect.

“While we need more answers as to why this pause in hiring for obstetrics and labor and delivery services is taking place in Newton, these potential cuts are a concerning trend for Iowa women and families,” Hart said in a statement. “What we do know is that Republicans passed a draconian six-week abortion ban that criminalizes abortion in our state. That ban makes it difficult for doctors to provide women with necessary medical care. These extreme laws are not attracting younger families to Iowa and are hurting the economies of our small towns.”

Michaela Ramm covers health care for the Des Moines Register. She can be reached at mramm@registermedia.com , at (319) 339-7354 or on Twitter at @Michaela_Ramm .

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Newton Medical Center to close birthing unit, furthering Iowa's maternity care shortage