Roseland Hospital’s plan to end labor and delivery services Oct. 31 is raising concerns among maternal health advocates about where South Side families will give birth and how they will get there.
The community safety net hospital faces severe financial pressures, according to a report obtained by NBC Chicago and sent to Illinois state hospital regulators. Hospital administrators say they can no longer afford to keep a full maternal unit operating.
“We can’t put the whole entire hospital at risk just for one department,” a high-level hospital administrator told NBC Chicago. “That’s where we’re at now.”
The report says an obstetrics clinic will continue to operate. But community organizations said losing labor and delivery services will disrupt care for pregnant patients and put more pressure on the providers helping them navigate an already strained system.
“We’re a little bit frazzled because we know that this is going to have immediate impacts in terms of the care that we’re providing,” said Tayo Mbande, co-founder and CEO of Chicago Birthworks Collective.
Mbande said doulas supporting patients at Roseland are now trying to determine where those patients will deliver. Families have already begun calling and texting with questions about what the change means for their pregnancies.
Community workers are helping connect patients with providers, sort through insurance questions and arrange transportation, she said. They are also offering emotional support to patients facing a change in the care teams they know.
“It’s a big deal to change your care center,” Mbande said. “That’s your care home.”
Advocates expect patients to turn to Advocate Trinity Hospital and UChicago Medicine in Hyde Park. Mbande said both could face additional pressure as Roseland patients seek appointments and delivery services.
“We anticipate that a lot of folks are going to go over to Advocate Trinity,” she said. “There are some programs there that are doing really good work, but they’re just not going to be able to carry the entire influx.”
Transportation is another major concern, particularly for patients who lack the means to travel outside their neighborhoods.
Star August Ali, executive director and founder of Black Midwifery Collective, said the closure compounds what she described as growing “obstetric deserts,” where access to maternity care is limited.
For families, that can mean traveling farther for care. For midwives, she said, the distance to a hospital also matters when a patient needs an emergency transfer.
“Being able to have a hospital … as me as a midwife, being able to transfer someone, transfer one of my clients to a hospital that’s close by could mean life or death,” August Ali said.
Her organization has partnered with Kennedy-King College in Englewood to create a direct-entry midwifery education program aimed at training more community-based birth providers. Training is expected to begin in January and last two and a half years.
August Ali described the initiative as the first direct-entry midwifery program in Illinois and the first of its kind located within a predominantly Black community in the United States.
The partnership follows the passage of the Illinois Midwifery Practice Act in 2022, which allows licensed midwives to practice statewide. Midwives provide care during and after pregnancy, including outside hospital settings.
August Ali said expanding access to midwifery education can help people train within their own communities and return to serve families who share their cultural backgrounds. She sees the program as a response to both gaps in maternity services and concerns about how Black patients are treated within the health care system.
“I recognize that having autonomy over my body, especially in this day and age, where we still have racism embedded within healthcare systems, is super important to us being able to make it out alive and having positive outcomes,” she said.
As hospital maternity services disappear, August Ali called for greater investment in a community-based workforce.
Mbande said local organizations will continue helping families connect the pieces of their care, but warned that hospital closures carry consequences beyond a single department.
“These are not small decisions,” she said. “These are decisions that will follow us for a long time.”
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