Here are seven hospitals Becker’s has reported on shuttering services in the last month:
1. Hartford-based Connecticut Children’s filed a certificate of need to close an inpatient unit operating at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury. The system linked the decision to staffing shortages, low volumes and financial challenges.
2. Minneapolis-based Allina Health is consolidating labor and delivery services in southern Minnesota and will close the birth center at Faribault (Minn.) Medical Center Dec. 1. The move comes after Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic Health System notified Allina in September that it will end on-call OB-GYN physician services at Allina’s Owatonna (Minn.) Hospital Nov. 17.
3. Rutland (Vt.) Regional Medical Center is closing its five licensed pediatric beds within the Women’s and Children’s Unit as part of a broader transition in service delivery. The community hospital plans to phase out its inpatient pediatric beds, citing a nationwide decline in the number of children requiring hospital stays longer than 24 hours.
4. Kettering (Ohio) Health plans to end obstetric services at Beavercreek, Ohio-based Soin Medical Center and transition them to Kettering (Ohio) Health Main Campus and Kettering Health Washington Township in Dayton. The system pointed to national and regional trends of birthing rate declines as primary drivers of the consolidation.
5. Cleveland-based MetroHealth plans to close its psychiatric emergency department at the Cleveland Heights Medical Center by Dec. 31 and reassign 35 employees to other behavioral health services across the system. The decision follows a Cuyahoga County Council vote to allocate $7 million to The Centers, a community provider, for the development of a new behavioral health crisis center.
6. Aspirus Health transitioned the surgical services program at Aspirus Iron River Hospital in Michigan to a day-only schedule, effective Oct. 26.
7. Renton, Wash.-based Providence plans to permanently close four occupational medicine and workplace health services clinics in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 7, affecting 43 employees. Leaders told the clinics have lost more than half of their occupational medicine clinicians.
