Dozens of registered nurses, doctors and maternal care advocates protested the planned closure of a postpartum unit at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, the largest hospital in the District.
“Closing these 11 postpartum beds will directly affect these new parents and their babies during an incredibly vulnerable time,” registered nurse Kiersten Lally with D.C. Nurses Association said at the Thursday rally.
“Postpartum units are a space where patients spend a few days after giving birth to heal, recover and learn how to care for themselves and their baby,” Lally said. “Shortening their stay or forcing them to choose a new hospital to deliver at will certainly create worse outcomes in an already vulnerable patient population.”
One in three of all children born in D.C. are born at Washington Hospital Center. Between 2000 and 2018 all obstetric programs were shuttered, leaving none in Wards 5, 6, 7 and 8.
MedStar Washington Hospital Center and Howard University Hospital have been the only options for delivery for residents in the eastern half of the District, until the recent opening of Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center.
In a statement, MedStar Washington Hospital Center said declining birth rates in the District and financial pressures will prompt the consolidation of its postpartum services.
The closure of 11 beds in Unit 5F will leave 18 postpartum beds available in the hospital, “which are more than sufficient to safely and fully meet the needs of the patients we serve today and into the foreseeable future,” the hospital said in a statement.
Dr. Aza Nedhari said the patients she serves as president and CEO of Mamatoto Village 鈥� a nonprofit offering pregnancy and postpartum services 鈥� “deserve a hospital that expands to meet them, and not one that quietly contracts when they’re not looking.”
Nedhari made a request of MedStar Washington Hospital Center: “Keep what you already have before you build anything new, before the next initiative, before the next research study 鈥� keep the beds that are already serving mothers open.”
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