BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) — A New Orleans-based well being care system will cease delivering infants after this month at a hospital it operates on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Ochsner Well being System began managing Hancock Medical Middle in 2013. Then in April 2018, the hospital in Bay St. Louis was renamed Ochsner Medical Center-Hancock.
Hancock County appearing administrator Jimmie Ladner advised the Sun Herald this week that Ochsner had notified the county of its resolution to shut the labor and supply division. The well being system cited a comparatively low variety of births and the departure of the obstetrician who had delivered infants on the hospital.
“The county is definitely disillusioned any time any service is faraway from the hospital,” Ladner stated.
Ladner stated offering labor and supply providers will not be required by Ochsner’s lease settlement with Hancock County, so county officers had no energy to dam or approve the hospital system’s resolution.
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Tim Riddell, Ochsner’s regional medical director for the Mississippi Gulf Coast, stated in an e mail to the newspaper that the well being system “should frequently evolve our service choices to higher meet these wants at present and sooner or later.”
“Whereas we’ll now not offer labor and supply providers at Ochsner Medical Middle-Hancock, we stay dedicated to offering girls’s and kids’s care,” Riddell stated.
Waveland Mayor Mike Smith had not but heard concerning the closure of the division when he was contacted by the Solar Herald.
“My oldest youngster was born at Hancock Medical,” Smith wrote in a textual content message. “I do know that it’s troublesome sufficient attending to the hospital if it’s shut by once you’re in labor, however having to drive a further half-hour or extra additional would make that much more troublesome.”
Ochsner Medical Middle-Hancock is the one hospital with labor and supply providers in Hancock County, in accordance with the Mississippi State Department of Health. The closest hospitals providing these providers are two in Gulfport. A type of is about 17 miles (27.4 kilometers) from the hospital in Bay St. Louis. The opposite is about 29 miles (46.7 kilometers) away.
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