Grand View Hospital in Sellersville is shutting down its maternity ward on Dec. 1, a St. Luke’s University Health Network spokesperson told The Morning Call newspaper.
The health network said the shutdown is temporary and comes after multiple doctors resigned, spokesperson Samuel Kennedy said. In the meantime, labor and delivery patients will be redirected to St. Luke’s Upper Bucks in Milford Township.
Grand View will continue to offer outpatient obstetric and women’s health services, Kennedy said, and Grand View staff affected by the closure have the option to transfer their roles to the Upper Bucks campus.
St. Luke’s acquired Grand View Health earlier this year. Later that month, Grand View abruptly closed five outpatient offices, which led to a citation from the Pennsylvania Department of Health for failing to provide 60 days notice.
Kennedy did not immediately respond to questions about how St. Luke’s plans to recruit and replace the physicians who left.
PA faces shortage of maternity wards, doctors
Pennsylvania faces a growing shortage of labor and delivery services, especially in rural areas.
Almost a third of counties have no hospitals offering maternity care, and almost half of counties have just one such hospital according to Pennsylvania Health Access Network, a healthcare advocacy group.
Bucks County is among a minority of counties that still have multiple maternity wards, including St. Luke’s Upper Bucks, Doylestown Hospital, and St. Mary Medical Center in Middletown.
Pennsylvania lost more than a quarter of its maternity wards from 2010 to 2022, health researchers have found.
The medical field in general is facing labor shortages, and the taxing nature of a job in the maternity ward can make it even harder to retain specialists, according to health experts. As many as three-quarters of OB/GYNs experience professional burnout, an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists report found.
“It’s really just, where have the doctors gone?” Dr. Amanda Flicker, chair of obstetrics and gynecology in the Lehigh Valley Health Network, said in 2023.
Many are taking early retirements, she said, or moving out of direct clinical care. The same thing is happening with nurses in maternity units, Flicker added.
More: How good are Bucks County hospitals for childbirth, maternity care? What the data shows
Even outside hospitals, obstetricians are in short supply in many rural parts of Pennsylvania, and of those who are practicing, a higher percentage are over age 75 compared to other areas of the commonwealth, according to a report by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.
The number of OB/GYNs in Pennsylvania is expected to flatline between 2018 and 2028, with 0% growth forecasted by analysts at Projections Central, a federally funded program that makes state and local projections.
Jess Rohan can be reached at jrohan@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Grand View in Sellersville closing maternity ward Dec 1