Birthing center nurses protest for the service to stay at Elyria hospital

ELYRIA — Current and former nurses showed up Thursday to support keeping University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center's birthing center in the city. On a day that Mayor Frank Whitfield and Dr. Rima Bachuwa met with hospital administration to discuss the move, the nurses stood at the corner of University Hospitals to protest the elimination of the birthing center. In July, UH announced birthing services at Elyria would move to UH St. John Medical Center in Westlake. Cardiac services at St. John would transition over to Elyria. Since that decision, Whitfield and nurses at the birthing center have pleaded with UH to reconsider the move, citing the harm to the community and potential negative effect on Elyria's infant mortality rates. Bachuwa, chief of the obstetrics department at UH Elyria, said St. John is not prepared to handle the influx of patients at Elyria. St. John's birthing unit is about a quarter of the size of Elyria's, which was remodeled in recent years. Whitfield told the group of protesters before going into a meeting that they are requesting the hospital first delay the move so they can make a decision. The second request is that the birthing center stays. There are also different rankings for neonatal intensive care units, and Elyria's is a level two, which means it can handle higher-level issues than St. John, which is a level one. Prenatal and postnatal care will continue to be offered at UH Elyria with OB/GYN physician and midwife care, the Hampson Mole Breast Health Suite, GYN surgical services and pediatric ED services. "The nurses at Elyria are well trained to handle the higher-level issues that the St. John nurses have not," Bachuwa said. "If anything, it would have made more sense to consolidate here." Transportation is a huge concern for moving the birthing center. Bachuwa said Elyria will see more emergency-department births, and those doctors don't specialize in procedures such as cesarean sections. Bachuwa said many patients don't have the means to make the drive over to a different hospital. It's a 20- to 30-minute drive to St. John, and when it comes to birth, Bachuwa said that can be a long time. If it weren't for UH Elyria, Jen Taylor said she would have lived that experience. Her daughter was born within 15 to 20 minutes of coming through the doors. The sign her daughter held Thursday said Taylor would have given birth on the side of the road if she would have had to go to St. John. She was a high-risk pregnancy, so Taylor said delivering without medical care would have been extremely difficult. After delivering her daughter, Taylor became a nurse at the birthing center, so now her job is in jeopardy, too. "But I'm here to support my community, too," she said. "I live in this community. I live in Elyria a few blocks from the hospital and I want my community to have access to the same services that I was fortunate enough to have." For all the birthing center nurses at Elyria, there are no positions open to them at St. John. Bachuwa said UH is offering jobs overall, but that would take an OB nurse and put them in a totally different field. "That's not fair," she said. Sherry Wallace has since retired but worked at the hospital for 40 years and had a child there. "It's just unbelievable they're even thinking about it," Wallace said. "I understand the money and the situation, but it's just more of the personal kind of thing. There's so many people here in Elyria that need this place that can't get to Lorain, can't get to Westlake. You need to have something here." With the departure of birthing at UH Elyria, Mercy Health Lorain is the only birthing hospital left in Lorain County. Wallace said the Elyria hospital has always been a community hospital, starting from birth to the end of life. "You were born here; you died here," she said. "You have your babies here, you come back because someone hurt their knees, you come back for an appendectomy, and then you die here later. That's the circle of life at a community hospital." Contact Laina Yost at (440) 329-7121 or lyost@chroniclet.com.