Beverly Hospital To Close Birth Center, Invest In Midwife Services

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly Hospital and Beth Israel Health will proceed with the closure of the North Shore Birth Center on Dec. 1, while providing investment and lease space for independent midwife services in the region, in a move intended to mitigate opposition to the shuttering of the free-standing Birth Center after 42 years of operations.

Beverly Hospital, which had delayed the closure announced this spring amid outcry from public officials and advocates for midwife childbirth, said it will expand those services within the hospital's maternity unit, and look to lease the North Shore Birth Center building to an independent midwifery practice for an undetermined period of time.

Beth Israel Lahey Health also pledged to provide $1.5 million in grant funding to one or more community organizations to support the creation, expansion, or reopening of birth centers licensed by the state Department of Public Health.

"We understand and appreciate that midwifery care and birth center-based services are valued choices in our community, and we are committed to continuing to support low-intervention options for maternal care patients," Beverly Hospital President Tom Sands said in a statement to Patch. "The significant investments we are making in midwifery care and birth center services reflect our commitment to meeting the region’s diverse health care needs, and we look forward to
ongoing collaboration with members of the community to deliver outstanding care to our patients."

Peabody resident Emilee Regan, a Birth Center patient and member of the Campaign to Save the North Shore Birth Center, told Patch on Thursday that while the Campaign is in favor of the funding for more birth choices for families, the lack of guarantees Beverly Hospital's plans makes them insufficient for patients that rely on Birth Center services.

"Unfortunately, this proposal falls far short of meaningfully addressing the problems at the root of the Birth Center's closure," the Campaign to Save the North Shore Birth Center said in a statement to Patch. "It does not guarantee access to midwifery care for families on the North Shore, and it does not provide a realistic path forward for the community to establish a freestanding birth center.

"When Beth Israel Lahey Health merged in 2019, President and CEO Kevin Tabb promised extraordinary care in local settings. Rather than doing the work to live up to that promise, BILH continues to slash essential local services and limit reproductive choice to benefit its bottom line."

Beverly Hospital has cited staffing shortages and the effect those shortages have on providing quality care as the primary reason for the Birth Center's closing.

The North Shore Birth Center stopped accepting new patients early this fall and said that as of this week "all existing patients of the North Shore Birth Center have given birth and received scheduled post-partum care."

Beth Israel Health said it will conduct a review of Beverly Hospital's maternity program to "assure continued access to high-quality midwifery care and low-intervention birth services" at the hospital. It said a water birth tub will be added this spring and that it will update the training and education of all labor and delivery staff on natural labor.

Beverly Hospital's statement said the lease of the Birth Center building will give the undisclosed independent practice time to "establish business in the community while a new birth center location is explored."

The hospital said it will also create a maternal-newborn Patient Family Advisory Council to more formally connect maternal and newborn caregivers at the hospital with patients and family members in the community, as well as establish a system-wide maternal quality initiative throughout Beth Israel Lahey Health.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)