Daily Herald opinion: Keeping the ‘community’ in community health a challenge

Elk Grove Village and Ascension Alexian Brothers Medical Center have been joined at the hip since the hospital opened in 1966, part of the Northwest suburban hospital boom that mirrored the explosive postwar population growth of the late 1950s and early ’60s and included Northwest Community Hospital, Lutheran General and Holy Family.

Prior to the boom, residents who needed a hospital often found themselves back in Chicago or in Evanston, Elmhurst or Elgin. So, it wasn’t surprising that the Elk Grove community rallied around having a hospital of its own, with dedicated fundraising that began well before ground was broken in 1963. As the years passed, the fundraising intensified, until the annual Balls de Fleur became the stuff of fundraising legend.

Now, 60 years later, a rift is widening between the community that nurtured Alexian Brothers and its current owners, Ascension Illinois. Ascension is proposing to close the medical center’s maternity ward, shifting all obstetrics to the Ascension St. Alexius Women and Children's Hospital on the Ascension St. Alexius campus in Hoffman Estates.

Keeping the “community” in community health care is a tricky business these days. Just ask Des Plaines, which mourned in 2001 when Holy Family was sold and turned into a specialty hospital for long-term care patients. With Alexian’s loss of obstetrics scheduled for Sept. 30 and previous cuts to the pulmonary, pediatrics and radiology departments, Elk Grove Mayor Craig Johnson worries that the same “specialty hospital” fate may be in store for Alexian Brothers Medical Center.

“A maternity ward is the heart and soul of a hospital,” Johnson said at a recent board meeting, adding that the surge of young families into Elk Grove Village makes this decision particularly ill-timed. “That brings in your patients for a lifetime. It’s what you expect in a community hospital.”

We don’t know the hospital business like Ascension does. Obviously, it’s in any community’s best interest for their hospital to be successful, and Ascension officials believe this move is the right one for the business, and by extension, the community.

In short order, the petition to close obstetrics at Alexian Brothers will be in the hands of the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board, which has final approval. The hospital’s nurses are lobbying the review board to reject the closure, and Johnson said the village may file its own objection.

Across the U.S., hospitals have been closing maternity departments in troubling numbers since the 1990s. A study published this year in both JAMA and Health Affairs says more than 500 American hospitals stopped delivering babies between 2010 and 2022. Illinois is one of eight states without obstetric service in more than two-thirds of their rural hospitals. Moreover, when maternity wards disappear so can obstetric-based outpatient services, which can mean fewer prenatal visits and postpartum support. Emergency obstetric care is affected, as ambulances must go farther to reach facilities equipped to handle crises.

The reasons for the closures vary from financial pressures, fewer births overall and labor shortages due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Rural and inner-city residents, of course, suffer the most catastrophic effects (35.7% of U.S. urban hospitals lacked obstetric services by 2022; in rural areas it’s 52%).

We in the suburbs remain blessed to have the quality health care we’ve enjoyed since the 1960s. But all of us should keep an eye on what is happening here. The battle between community and expediency will continue.