Maternity advocates organize
birth center committee

By Diane Prokop
Time Staff Writer

No one understands the urgency of the maternity crisis in Northeast Philadelphia better than Holme Circle resident Allison McDonagh does.
McDonagh was nine months pregnant at last week’s brainstorming meeting of folks gathered at Northeast Regional Library to talk about options and actions they can take to address the maternity care crisis. She will travel to Bryn Mawr to have her baby because the providers are no longer available locally.
Here in the Northeast, McDonagh and other pregnant women and their families have been left virtually stranded as due dates approach, since all four obstetrics units that once offered care to women in the Northeast have been phased out.
In 1998, Nazareth Hospital closed its maternity unit. Parkview Hospital closed altogether in 2003, while Frankford and Jeanes hospitals closed their obstetrics units within the past 20 months.
As a result, the closest hospital obstetrics unit in the city is at Northeastern Hospital, at the very southern end of the Northeast. Einstein Medical Center and Temple University Hospital are located out of the Northeast. In the suburbs, Abington Memorial and Holy Redeemer hospitals in Montgomery County, and St. Mary Medical Center and Lower Bucks Hospital in Bucks County, have picked up some of the overflow patients with the closure of Jeanes Hospital’s maternity division last spring.
While suburban hospitals can be closer for some Northeast Philadelphia women, that reality truly exists only if they don’t have to rely on public transportation to reach them. Also, some hospitals don’t accept all managed care or insurance plans.
Sue Rosenthal, chairwoman of the community board at the District 10 Health Center, chaired the meeting discussing all of those issues, including the establishment of a birthing center in Northeast Philadelphia.
Also in attendance were doulas like McDonagh — a doula is a woman who accompanies a mom-to-be in labor, taking care of her emotional needs throughout childbirth — along with nurses, nurse midwives, concerned citizens and politicians including Matt Taubenberger, Republican candidate in the 170th Legislative District. Taubenberger also represented state Rep. George Kenney at the meeting. Tom Forkin, an aide to state House Speaker Dennis O’Brien (R-169th dist.), and Karen Gurmankin, representing U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-13th dist.) were also on hand.
Much of the 90-minute session revolved around the establishment of a free-standing birthing center, a facility modeled after a home delivery for low-risk births without pain medication. The centers are set up with bedrooms with full- or queen-size beds with kitchens, lounge areas and whirlpool baths.
Staffed by nurse midwives and doulas, patients receive all their prenatal care there — as one woman put it, "Not just checking under the hood but whole-woman care."
While it wouldn’t address all the issues at hand, about a half-dozen attendees agreed to form a committee to investigate what it would take to set up a birthing center in the Northeast and to sustain it.
The group concurred that it needs to work with state legislators to get insurance companies to pay more for births. However, since insurance companies negotiate with individual hospitals regarding reimbursement rates, the group will need to find out what those rates are before they can lobby to get them raised.
Morrell Park resident Elmer Money suggested that the group looks into a reinstitution of a certificate of need program. From 1979 to ’96, Pennsylvania hospitals receiving federal funds and looking to expand had to submit a certificate of need to show that their proposed service and associated capital expenses were needed in the community.
Money and others in attendance believe that hospitals receiving federal funds should be required to service the needs of their community — namely maternity care.
Taubenberger, however, suggested that instead of making businesses (hospitals) do something, the group needed to create a situation where businesses want to do something.
The next meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25, at the Northeast Regional Library, 2228 Cottman Ave. ••
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com