When pregnant women go into labor and need to deliver their baby, how far should they have to travel to get to a hospital?
That's a question a nurses union is asking, after Ascension Wisconsin Health Care announced on Wednesday it is ending admission to its labor and delivery unit at Saint Francis Hospital. The hospital is on 16th Street just south of Oklahoma Ave., on Milwaukee's south side. No other south side hospital offers those services.
About 20 union jobs, mostly in nursing, will be cut at Saint Francis.
Jamie Lucas is with the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. He says it's potentially harmful to leave south side neighborhoods without labor and delivery care.
"We don't want to see a situation where somebody, an extra commute time of a couple of minutes, is the difference between life or death. As a fact of the matter, if they invested in our hospital right now, they way we've asked them to, those things never have the opportunity to happen. People remain safe," Lucas tells WUWM.
Ascension says parents-to-be and babies can instead have access to a high level of infant and obstetrical services at the private healthcare company's hospitals on the east and north sides. Ascension says the consolidation ensures access to the most comprehensive labor, delivery and postpartum services.
But Lucas says the nurses union will hold a rally outside Milwaukee City Hall Tuesday night, asking city officials to try to halt the labor and delivery unit closing at Saint Francis.
"We are a city that has really deeply embedded health inequities. It matters very much what zip code you are in, what language you speak, what color your skin is. That determines to a far greater extent than it should, the kind of care you are going to receive in your own back yard, and this is going to deepen that divide," Lucas says.
Lucas says about four years ago, the city helped delay or halt some job cuts at Ascension's St. Joseph Campus.
The company says plans are in place to help affected Saint Francis employees transition to other Ascension Wisconsin facilities.
The nurses union says a collective bargaining agreement renewed last spring sets forward a process to help place employees into vacant positions.
But the union says that should be an option of last resort, and not leave parents-to-be across miles of the city without easy access to labor and delivery care.
