Advocate South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest is planning to end obstetrics and birthing services amid declining demand, joining a group of other hospitals in the Chicago area that have discontinued obstetrics services for similar reasons.

The hospital, part of the Advocate Aurora Health network, submitted paperwork with the Illinois Health Facilities & Services Review Board to discontinue its 16-bed obstetrics inpatient unit at the hospital later this summer. In the application, the 233-bed hospital said it anticipates closing the unit in August or immediately following approval from the board.

Advocate South Suburban says that obstetrics cases dropped from 1,228 admissions in 2020 to 899 in 2021.

Though the inpatient unit will be discontinued, Advocate South Suburban says it will still offer outpatient gynecologic and obstetrics services. If a patient needs care not available at the hospital, it will divert them to a nearby Advocate Aurora hospital with an active labor and delivery program.

The health system says expanded obstetrics services will be available at Advocate Christ in Oak Lawn, which is 13 miles from South Suburban, and Advocate Trinity, which is 17 miles away in Calumet Heights.

Advocate South Suburban hasn’t yet determined what the 16 beds in the closed obstetrics unit would be converted to. When the hospital selects a new category, it says it will submit a certificate of need application with the board.

The hospital will work to help employees in the obstetrics unit find new jobs in other departments, wrote Advocate South Suburban's President Rashard Johnson in a memo to employees provided to Crain's.

"We are committed to minimizing the impact on our team members and patients," Johnson wrote.

He also announced in the memo a $20 million investment to build a behavioral health unit in the hospital. Construction is expected to begin later this year and the facility is slated to open in 2023.

Across the U.S., births have steadily declined in the last several years. The birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. In Illinois, births have fallen every year since 2014, dropping from about 158,500 births to 140,000 in 2019, Illinois Department of Public Health data shows.

Other hospitals in the Chicago area have made similar moves to Advocate South Suburban. Sinai Health System’s Holy Cross Hospital on Chicago’s Southwest Side temporarily suspended obstetrics services in 2019 and later closed its birthing unit permanently due to low patient volume. At the time, Sinai said closing the obstetrics unit would help the hospital become more operationally efficient.

“Our decision is driven by consistently low volumes in this unit trending over the last decade,” the health system said in a statement when it announced it would not be reopening the birthing center.

Additionally, St. Bernard Hospital in Englewood and Jackson Park Hospital & Medical Center have discontinued labor and delivery services in recent years.

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