“If a mother is in labor and close to delivery, of course, Regional will deliver that baby,” said Sarah Sherwood, spokesperson for Regional Medical Center. “By law, we have to take any emergent patient, and we would anyway.”
Sherwood said the closure is being driven by health care trends: Birth rates have declined in San Jose since 2008, falling in line with a national decline.
“We have tried to save the (Obstetrics) department at Regional,” Sherwood said, “but … it is not possible to keep the department open with an average of just two births a day.”
Patients are better served by doctors who perform services on a more frequent basis, Sherwood said. Good Sam had over 3600 births in 2019, she said.
State legislators have joined in calling for HCA to reverse its decision to shut down the unit May 31.
Assemblyman Ash Kalra tweeted on Wednesday that he, along with San Jose Assemblyman Kansen Chu and State Senator Jim Beall Jr., had sent the hospital’s owners a letter calling for the ward to stay open. “As (the) only hospital in east San Jose, we need to keep services open for expecting mothers & children,” Kalra added.
A Change.org petition protesting the closure had received nearly 12,000 signatures as of Thursday evening.
“Many of our patients don’t have prenatal care or have the ability to get to their doctor so they come here to seek adequate care,” Zeman said. “Women of child-bearing age have to go quite a distance to get the care they deserve, and we don’t think that’s fair.”
Correction, May 28, 2020: An earlier version of this article overstated the number of babies delivered at the hospital each year. Hospital spokesperson Sarah Sherwood said Regional had 719 births in 2019. The article also initially failed to seek a response from the hospital to complaints from its nurses. A response is now included.
