CHULA VISTA, Calif. (FOX 5/KUSI) — Health care workers took to the streets Saturday afternoon to protest the planned closure of the maternity unit at Scripps Mercy Chula Vista.
A small group of nurses and doctors gathered at the Hotel del Coronado, where the Scripps Foundation held an event for donors to make it clear that babies and mothers would suffer if the unit was moved.
“Closing this facility will create a veritable obstetric desert in the southwest corner of San Diego County,” said Susannah Chow, a physician who participated in the protest.
Last month, Scripps Health announced plans to disband the district's obstetrics department and transfer all labor and delivery to Scripps Mercy Hillcrest. The unit has 30 beds and is known for its services to local ethnic minority communities.
“Eighty-nine percent of our patients are brown, low-socioeconomic-status Hispanic, and babies of color are important to us,” said Scripps Mercy Chula Vista Labor and Delivery Registered Nurse. said teacher Juliana Gonzalez.
“We're very close to the trolley station, so women walk there,” she added. “During labor, an emergency can occur within minutes. And if they're going to move to Hillcrest, which is 45 minutes away by trolley or public transportation, women can die. be.”
Scripps Health says its Chula Vista location currently handles about 14% of births to mothers in the southern part of the county, and about 60% of women in the southern part of the county give birth at hospitals outside the South Bay.
By consolidating delivery and postpartum services to the Hillcrest campus, Scripps will be able to make more beds available for other patients, including those in the ER.
“This means emergency rooms are doing their best to accommodate women and infants who come to us,” Chow said. “But they're not obstetricians, they can't do C-sections, and they don't have a complete neonatal resuscitation team. This is an avoidable disaster, and it's a work in progress.”
Scripps Health says the Chula Vista facility will continue to be equipped to handle emergency child births even after the labor and delivery departments are combined.
