Community Meeting Held To Discuss Closure of South Side Hospital’s Obstetrics Unit

Community members and medical professionals recently came together to discuss the coming closure of Jackson Park Hospital’s obstetrics unit and the potential effects it will have on the south side.
Community members and medical professionals recently came together to discuss the coming closure of Jackson Park Hospital’s obstetrics unit and the potential effects it will have on the south side.

Community Meeting Held To Discuss Closure of South Side Hospital’s Obstetrics Unit

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

In an effort to encourage the Jackson Park Hospital to reverse their decision to close its obstetrics unit, which offers medical care for pregnant women, hospital staff and community members recently held a public meeting at The Quarry Event Center, 2423 E. 75th St., to discuss the need for this unit to remain open and the potential consequences of its closure.

In April, Jackson Park Hospital submitted an application for Certificate of Exemption to the Illinois Department of Public Health seeking its approval to end obstetrics services at the facility.

In July of 2012, Jackson Park Hospital re-opened its newly renovated obstetrics unit which included the creation of two labor, delivery, and recovery suites, two triage rooms, a family waiting area, and a new nurse’s station. The $4.6 million renovation project also included remodeling 11,436 square feet of existing rooms in the unit to create a more comfortable postpartum environment for mothers, newborns, and families, according to information from Jackson Park Hospital.

Funding for the renovation came from an Illinois Department of Public Health grant as part of the Hospital Capital Investment Program which was created to improve the quality of health care in communities, according to information from Jackson Park Hospital.

“We know that the administration at Jackson Park Hospital absolutely needs to be honored for their efforts but where they drop the ball is when our unit is a stateof-the-art unit with all African American female OB/GYNs who are absolutely overqualified with years of service experience and they want to close it,” said Dr. Rita McGuire, obstetrician and gynecologist at Jackson Park Hospital.

Dr. McGuire went on to say that closing the obstetrics unit at Jackson Park Hospital will create an obstetric care dessert in the area and negatively impact an already vulnerable population of women.

The 2018 Illinois Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Report found that black women were about six times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

Similarly, women on Medicaid during pregnancy were two and a half times as likely to die within one year of pregnancy as women with private insurance.“Jackson Park Hospital reports that about 99 percent of women who deliver at the facility are black and the majority of them are on Medicaid, based on this analysis, we know that mothers in the communities surrounding Jackson Park Hospital suffer from elevated maternal mortality rates.

Elimination of services carries a high likelihood of exacerbating this crisis,” said Gwendolyn Woolridge, a registered nurse in the obstetrics unit at Jackson Park Hospital. Jackson Park Hospital has served the South Shore community for over 100 years and the physicians, staff, and Board of Directors of the Jackson Park Hospital Foundation operate with a mission of providing compassionate and high-quality healthcare services to meet the needs of the patients and communities they serve, according to the Jackson Park Hospital Website.

A request for comment from an administrator at Jackson Park Hospital was not returned by the Citizen’s press time.

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