For the first time in 28 years, Chatham County has its own maternity center
Defying a national trend, the small hospital in rural Siler City has begun delivering babies again.
Chatham Hospital’s new Maternity Care Center opened Tuesday morning, restoring a service the hospital discontinued 28 years ago.
The move is a response to population growth in Chatham and surrounding counties, and was made possible by the hospital’s affiliation with UNC Health. The Chapel Hill-based health care system spent $2.6 million to build and equip the new center.
Chatham closed its maternity ward in 1992 in part because it had become too expensive to operate for such a small number of new mothers, said UNC Health spokesman Alan Wolf.
“More recently, the population growth in that region has attracted more young families, more mothers who want to deliver closer to home (rather than drive an hour or so to UNC or Duke or some other hospital),” Wolf wrote in an email.
The opening of a maternity center in a rural area goes against the trend in North Carolina and across the country. Since 2013, at least 10 rural communities in the state lost their labor and delivery services when the local maternity center or the entire hospital was closed, James DeVente, an obstetrician and gynecologist at East Carolina University’s medical school, told North Carolina Health News.
Chatham Hospital got the maternity center up and running with help from the county health department and Piedmont Health Services, a community health center, according to hospital president Jeff Strickler.
“It was important for UNC Health to provide these services because previously mothers had to drive an hour or more to get maternity care,” Strickler said in a written statement. “Our staff knows that Chatham Hospital is on the cutting edge with this project, and going against the national trend, so in some ways the eyes of the country are watching us.”
Chatham is one of 11 hospitals in the UNC Health system, the nonprofit owned by the state that generated more than $5.4 billion in net operating revenue last year. The 25-bed hospital was founded in 1937 and became affiliated with UNC Health in 2008.
Chatham Hospital expects to deliver as many as 120 babies during the first year of the maternity center, which has five beds. The center is designed for low-risk mothers and newborns.
