Hospital board member seeks Berwick support for obstetrics at Ochsner St. Mary

BERWICK — A hospital district board member on Tuesday asked the Berwick Town Council to support the effort to bring labor and delivery services back to Ochsner St. Mary.
The lack of those services endangers mothers, babies and St. Mary’s prospects for growth, said Angelena Brocato, a member of the Hospital Service District No. 2 board.
“If we don’t keep this as a hot-button item, it will be swept away,” Brocato told the council.
The district owns the Morgan City hospital operated under lease by Ochsner Health. An agreement brokered by Gov. John Bel Edwards brought Ochsner in as the new operator and is widely credited with keeping the hospital open after LifePoint of Tennessee announced its intention to pull out of its lease in 2019.
“When [Ochsner] came into the picture, it was absolutely necessary,” Brocato said.
But the relationship changed last March, when Ochsner announced its decision to end nonemergency labor and delivery services at Ochsner St. Mary as of April 1. The company said its Bayou Region obstetrical services were being consolidated at Ochsner St. Anne in Raceland.
The hospital had only one obstetrician on staff, and Ochsner cited patient safety concerns as well as demographic trends toward an older population and a smaller number of women of child-bearing age.
The cutback led to public concern about the availability of emergency labor and delivery services, the 22- to 68-mile trips needed to reach other hospitals, and a lack of available transportation for some expectant mothers.
The district and Ochsner agreed to continue talking about ways to bring labor and delivery services back to the hospital. But when no firm arrangement emerged by July, the district board pulled from the Oct. 14 ballot two tax measures proposed to provide money for physician recruitment and related purposes.
The work of recruiting physicians “for any department in a hospital in a rural area is not an easy task,” Brocato said Tuesday.
But a survey conducted by New Orleans pollster Dr. Silas Lee in June put labor and delivery services among the six services respondents want at Ochsner St. Mary, along with emergency services, pediatric, primary care, orthopedics and general surgery.
The hospital lost pediatric in-patient services when obstetrics went away in April. Pediatric care was restored in July, Brocato said.
“Prior to labor and delivery closing April 1, I had no idea how closely linked labor and delivery and pediatrics are,” she said.
Louisiana already has high rates of maternal deaths and infant mortality, she said.
The lack of obstetrics at the hospital will discourage young families from moving or staying in St. Mary, she said.
“We can’t grow as a community unless we take care of the needs of our hospital,” Brocato said.
She encouraged the council members to talk to others about the issue, to support efforts to bring labor and delivery back to Ochsner St. Mary, and to use the providers and services at the hospital.
“It’s not a women’s issue,” Brocato said. “It’s a parenting issue. It’s a community issue.”