Corry Out of Baby Biz
By David Bruce, Erie Times-News, Pa.
Jan. 4–CORRY — Jennifer Moore was thankful for clear roads during her pregnancy.
Moore and her husband, Nate, drove from their Corry home to Erie at least 20 times during the past several months for childbirth classes and obstetrician visits.
“It took us at least 40 minutes each time, and that’s without any snow on the roads,” said Jennifer Moore, who gave birth to her daughter, Makenna, on Monday at Hamot Medical Center. “Only once were the roads icy, and boy, I dreaded the drive that day.”
Expectant moms in the Corry area must travel 25 miles or more to deliver their babies since Corry Memorial Hospital closed its obstetrics department Oct. 31.
Corry Memorial stopped delivering babies because it was losing too much money, said Barb Nichols, the hospital’s chief executive.
“Our demographics simply didn’t support it,” Nichols said. “We couldn’t grow the service. We delivered 253 babies in 2005, and it wasn’t enough for us to recruit obstetricians to work here.”
Nichols wouldn’t say how much money the obstetrics department lost each year. The hospital as a whole reported a net loss of $918,000 in fiscal 2005 and has lost money in each of the past three years.
Closing the obstetrics department was one of several changes that Corry Memorial’s board of directors made in 2006 to stabilize the hospital’s finances, Nichols said.
“We brought in consultants to help us with our billing and revenue,” she said. “We also held tight on filling some staff vacancies. We made some tough decisions but I think we’re in better financial shape than we were a year ago.”
Corry Memorial is the second hospital in eastern Erie County to close its obstetrics department in the last 12 years. Union City Memorial Hospital stopped delivering babies in 1995, six years before Saint Vincent Health System converted the facility into an outpatient center.
That’s where the comparisons between the two hospitals stop, Nichols said.
“Corry Hospital is going to be here,” Nichols said. “We looked deep and hard at our services and made sure it’s what the people of this area need and want.”
The decision to stop delivering babies was difficult for some Corry Memorial staff to accept. Several nurses left to work at other hospitals, said Terry DeLellis, R.N., Corry Memorial’s director of nursing.
“Overall, the staff has started to move past it,” DeLellis said. “It’s a loss and we have to go through the grieving process. About half the staff from the department was absorbed into other areas of the hospital, and the rest went to work at other facilities.”
The doctor who delivered babies at Corry Memorial for more than 20 years continues to see expectant mothers. However, he transfers them during their third trimester to an obstetrics practice based at Millcreek Community Hospital.
“My (OB-GYN) practice is based in Erie, so I just decided to have my baby at Hamot,” Moore said. “They treated me well there, but it would have been nice to have the option to have my baby in Corry, in case of an emergency.”
Moore’s biggest worry was that she would go into early labor during a snowstorm and be miles away from any hospital.
Emergency responders in eastern Erie County said that they haven’t received any recent calls from pregnant women needing an ambulance ride to a hospital.
“It hasn’t been an issue,” said Chuck McCray, assistant chief of the Elgin-Beaverdam Volunteer Fire Department. “We usually get a few such calls during the year, but I can’t remember any recently.”
An employee of the Corry Ambulance Service, which serves the city of Corry, said he couldn’t comment on the matter because the service is owned in part by Corry Memorial.
Hospital officials informed community members ahead of time about their decision to close the obstetrics department.
It wasn’t a popular decision, but people understood why it happened, Corry Mayor Scott Sanford said.
“Do we miss it? I think so,” Sanford said.
“The telephones at city hall aren’t ringing off the hook, but people miss it. More importantly, they want their hospital to remain open.”
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