Alleghany Memorial to stop offering maternity services

The Alleghany Memorial Hospital Board of Directors cited budget woes after they voted Aug. 23 to stop offering maternity services, a move that will force numerous pregnant women to seek another location to deliver their babies.

Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kevin Harlan said in an interview Tuesday the final date for deliveries here will be between Dec. 1 and Dec. 31 of this year. He noted that AMH is negotiating with Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital in Elkin to accept local patients. He said another facet of that negotiation would also involve trying to bring Elkin doctors here for weekly clinics so women would not have to drive for routine checkups. He said bringing the doctors here could happen once a week, once a month or not at all, depending on how talks progress.

“They wouldn’t be doing any deliveries here,” Harlan said. Local patients have the option of choosing whichever hospital they would prefer to go to, he noted. But AMH would be making referrals to Hugh Chatham if the deal goes through as planned. Hugh Chatham currently hosts about 400 births per year and has the capacity to accept more than 700.

The maternity and delivery services are not the only hospital department to feel the budget axe — the board also agreed to stop offering its Adult Day Program, which helps give caregivers of seniors a break during the day to work or do other tasks. AMH recently dropped its in-home aide service and a home health contract with Northern Hospital of Surry County.

Harlan said the reason for the cuts are purely financial. He said that all rural hospitals are suffering from low reimbursement rates and other financial difficulties.

“We didn’t head into this just looking at maternity, we are looking at all of our service lines,” Harlan said. “First of all, we are a charity, but we must make a profit somewhere along the line.” Harlan said the hospital has lost about $110,000 this year delivering babies.

“Deliveries aren’t ever reimbursed at our cost,” he noted. He said the hospital is reimbursed about $1,300 per delivery and the cost is well over $3,000. Factored into that equation is all overhead, said Chief Financial Officer Ralph Castillo, from heating and air to electricity, staff and surgical supplies.

Harlan said the hospital’s core business is Medicare patients, while core services are emergency, in- patient medical care, laboratory work and surgical services. “Deliveries are 5 percent or less of our total volume,” he said.

In addition, Harlan noted that the hospital would need about $1.5 million in renovations to properly house births in the future, a move that would not pan out financially. “We can’t afford a new construction project when the pay back would never be there,”he said.

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