The Trenton Times published the following article on May 19, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Capital Health pulls back on plan to close Trenton’s last remaining birthing center

By Jenna Pizzi/The Times of Trenton 
on May 19, 2013 at 7:25 AM, updated May 19, 2013 at 7:26 AM

TRENTON — Capital Health has pulled back on a plan criticized by some health care advocates that would have closed the city’s last remaining birthing center and moved the services to the organization’s new medical center in Hopewell.

The organization had said that women in Trenton were increasingly choosing to deliver at the luxury birthing suites in Hopewell, and the Trenton birthing center was relatively inefficient. But a spokeswoman said last week that Capital Health ultimately decided not to pursue the move.

The organization made the decision in October in favor of pursuing other projects, spokeswoman Jayne O’Connor said.

“We just had a number of competing priorities at that time,” she said. “We decided to put it on the back burner.”

Capital Health had filed plans with the state Department of Health and Senior Services in April 2012 to close and consolidate the hospital’s perinatal center at its Regional Medical Center in Trenton and consolidate services at the Hopewell facility, which opened in November 2011.

Capital Health officials said at the time that more women were electing to give birth at the Hopewell medical center rather than at the Regional Medical Center, where the perinatal center was moved from the organization’s shuttered Mercer campus in October 2011.

Health department spokeswoman Donna Leusner said Capital Health never officially withdrew its application to consolidate the birthing center, but the application is considered withdrawn because the hospital stopped responding to letters from the department last year.

The Regional Medical Center offers the area’s only Level III neonatal intensive care unit, with 15 private patient rooms and 30 bassinets. When it opened, hospital officials said it would be a destination for patients needing high-risk pregnancy care, but in a document filed with the state last year, the unit was described as underutilized.

Capital Health also operates the Josephine Plumeri Birthing Center in Hopewell, which is licensed for 36 beds. It was also reported as having low occupancy levels, though a hospital official said last year that it was seeing almost three times as many deliveries as Trenton.

O’Connor said the consolidation plan could be revived in the future if hospital officials believe it would benefit patients.

“It is something that we continue to look at,” she said.

The consolidation plan had drawn some criticism from health care experts in the area. David Knowlton, the executive director of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, said he was concerned that low-income mothers in Trenton, who have a higher incidence of high-risk and low-birth weight babies, would be left without a neonatal intensive care unit nearby.

“It is not enough to say that everybody would prefer to give birth in a beautiful new facility,” Knowlton said. “That’s not to say that moms would keep their perinatal visits in Hopewell rather than down the street in Trenton.”

Knowlton, the board chairman at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, said he was not wholly opposed to Capital Health’s consolidation efforts but was happy to hear that the hospital was no longer looking to move the neonatal unit.

“I hope they will stay here,” he said.

Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.