Hospitals Partner to Add Doctors: Five Neonatologists Will Be Brought to Parkview From Indy’s St. Vincent.

By Jennifer L. Boen, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Apr. 26–Parkview Hospital and St.Vincent Women’s Hospital in Indianapolis have partnered to bring five board-certified neonatologists to the Fort Wayne-based Parkview Health system.

The contracts of five neonatologists now at Parkview Hospital on Randallia Drive will be allowed to expire, said Gary Penner, Parkview spokesman.

St. Vincent, however, may choose to hire some or all of them, said Dr. Chris Stroud, senior vice president and chief medical officer for Parkview Hospital. They had been under contract at Parkview through a Florida company, Pediatrix Medical Group.

Penner said St. Vincent doctors will begin offering services in Fort Wayne through Parkview in the fall.

The affiliation with St. Vincent will increase access to advanced neonatal care and allow northeast Indiana babies needing specialized care, and their mothers, to remain in the region instead of being transported to Indianapolis, Parkview officials said Wednesday.

Parkview North’s Women’s & Children’s Hospital, which includes a 30-bed neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU) with all private rooms, will open in spring 2008.

By 2011, most of Parkview on Randallia’s specialized services will be moved to the north-side hospital, though the Randallia campus will maintain a labor and delivery unit. All infants needing NICU services will be delivered at Parkview North or transported there.

St. Vincent Women’s Hospital, which has two NICUs totaling 79 beds in its two Indianapolis-area locations, delivers more multiple births and more at-risk babies than any other Indiana hospital. The maternal-fetal medicine specialists there have already provided consultations, comprehensive prenatal evaluation and advanced fetal diagnosis at Parkview Hospital for more than four years.

“St. Vincent Women’s Hospital’s experience will provide valuable insight as we move to our new state-of-the-art facility at the new Parkview Women’s & Children’s Hospital,” Stroud said in a statement. “Our NICU will be staffed 24/7 by neonatologists and specially trained neonatology professionals.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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