THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 7, 1995 TAG: 9508070039
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Every day, the public address system at Portsmouth's Maryview Medical Center broadcasts the good news: the names of all the children born in the maternity ward since the day before.
``We congratulate the parents and the staff in bringing new life to the world,'' the chaplain says. ``May God bless and protect these babies.''
Two years from now, Maryview babies may be coming into the world four miles or so down the road.
Maryview plans to move its entire maternity ward - including operating rooms - to a free-standing center in Churchland that's closer to population growth. Suffolk's Obici Hospital also would move part of its maternity department there, and Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, in Norfolk, would start doing some of its pediatric surgery there.
The movement of one of the hospital's happiest duties to a separate building represents a change in the way people are getting their health care. More and more, it is not in a hospital.
Instead, hospitals are betting that people will want nearby, one-stop-shopping for moms and kids, a place offering everything from Pap smears to births to well-baby checkups, with convenient parking and without the vast, baffling corridors of a big hospital.
A host of other treatments and services already has moved out of Hampton Roads hospital buildings and into doctors' offices and free-standing centers - including outpatient surgery, dialysis, chemotherapy, physical therapy and mammography. Maryview is the first local hospital to propose moving its entire maternity department out of the building.
A similar effort to create a mini-hospital is under way in Hampton, where Sentara Health System officials want to expand their ``CarePlex,'' an outpatient treatment and surgery center, to include overnight beds by swapping beds out of Sentara Hampton General Hospital.
And Tidewater Health Care, owner of Virginia Beach General and Portsmouth General, is looking to open a competing birthing center across from Maryview's proposed site on Route 17.
All projects still need approval from the Health Systems Agency, a state-run body that decides whether new medical facilities are needed in a community.
Projects like these are emerging because hospitals are faced with ever-shorter lengths of stay, due to improved technology and pressure from insurance companies. Hospitals are looking for new ways to deliver and market services.
Maryview's new facility would be strategically located in the growth area of Churchland, where Portsmouth, Suffolk and Chesapeake converge at the intersection of Route 17 and Interstate 664, and positioned to tap areas of predicted growth, like Isle of Wight County.
``We intend to offer services in a place that is convenient to those who need them,'' said Maryview's chief executive officer, Gary J. Herbek.
The new center would be, in effect, a small hospital, with rooms for overnight stays and operating rooms for Caesarean sections and other types of gynecological surgery. Children's Hospital also would provide some pediatric surgery there and help handle the nursery, although many of the details still are being worked out.
Obici would move some maternity beds and an operating room.
When mothers and children had serious complications, they would be shipped to Sentara Norfolk General or Children's Hospital - the same thing Maryview does now in such cases.
``Our plan is to have the same level of service (as) at Maryview or Obici,'' said Herbek. ``It's just using the same mechanisms that work well now, four miles down the road.''
The hospitals modeled the center on facilities in Florida and California, betting that a variety of services for moms and their kids in one place will attract customers.
``Women make a lot of health care decisions. They make them more than men do,'' said Herbek.
At 50-year-old Maryview, the move would end a tradition. When elementary school students come in for tours, they're asked to raise a hand if they were born at Maryview. Many do, and say their parents were born there, too.
But there's logic to getting the births out of the main hospital, said Obici's Stone.
``Pregnancy is not a disease,'' she said. ``It's a natural part of life.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
MARK MITCHELL
Staff
Nurturing a newborn: Registered nurse Carole Boone feeds Jarkira
Wood, whose mother is Juanita Wood, at Maryview.
by CNB