Premier Health closing maternity services at Miami Valley South, moving to main Dayton campus

CENTERVILLE — Staff members at Miami Valley Hospital South in Centerville were notified Tuesday the hospital network plans to shutter and move the maternity services to the main hospital campus in Dayton and in other parts of the network.

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The decision impacts around 70 employees, some of which work full-time at the hospital while others already transition between the the south and main campuses, Mike Uhl, President of Miami Valley Hospital told News Center 7′s Molly Koweek.

No jobs will be eliminated as part of the transition of services and workers of the unit will be offered positions at MVH main campus in Dayton or at other Premier Health facilities including Atrium Medical Center in Middletown.

“This is nothing to do with budget cuts. There are no job cuts. We will be offering everyone an opportunity to come to main campus or be redeployed to one of our other facilities, because we certainly have labor needs across our system as well,” Uhl said.

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Uhl added the decision was made after assessing needs by other departments in the hospital as COVID-19 cases declined.

“What we’ve actually experienced, even post the last pandemic surge, is a tremendous growth of our patient volume in other areas like orthopedics, spine, cardiovascular and even trauma. The situation we found ourselves in was not enough in-patient capacity to care for these patients resulting in patients boarding in the emergency department or patients even boarding post-surgery in a recovery room for extended periods of time,” Uhl said.

Combined with the increase of need for other services was a decline in birth rates seen not only at Miami Valley Hospital South, but across the region, Uhl said.

On average, Miami Valley Hospital South delivers around two to three babies per day, Uhl said. But decreasing birth rates nationwide and across the region also led to the decision.

“To better fulfil the community need, we had an opportunity to transition and consolidate services in our central market and around maternity services and at the same time expand our capacities in orthopedics, spine, and cardiovascular to serve the demand that’s challenging our campus now,” Uhl said.

The timeframe to fully move all Miami Valley South maternity operations to the main Dayton campus will be the end of June. By July 1, those deliveries planned for Miami Valley South will have been moved to Dayton, Uhl said.

Staff members impacted by the move will also be offered retention arrangements in form of financial incentives to stick with Premier Health during the transition period, Uhl said.

“Our team members are also a priority, just as our patients and our commitment to our team members is to take care of them because we know they are impacted and to do everything we can to retain them in our system. We understand they have choice but we’re making choice available to them across the network,” Uhl said.

We’ll update this story as we learn more.

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