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No complications: Babies OK’d for PFH

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Dr. Bill Cook knows one local expectant mom who probably wishes she could have delivered her baby at Piedmont Fayette Hospital.

Instead, her baby was born in a gas station parking lot on her way to Piedmont Hospital in Buckhead, he said.

“She might think that it’s about more than just convenience,” said Cook, an obstetrician who’s also chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees. “Hopefully we’ll have a lot fewer parking lot babies.”

Piedmont Fayette hopes to begin delivering babies in the summer of 2006 now that Southern Regional Hospital in nearby Riverdale has dropped its appeal of Fayette’s plans to offer obstetrics and delivery services.

Southern Regional withdrew its opposition after the chiefs of both facilities got together and shared information and concerns, officials said.

It was just a matter of Southern Regional having questions about Piedmont Fayette’s future plans and, apparently, getting the right answers, said Piedmont Fayette Hospital spokeswoman Ryan Duffy. No concessions were made to the hospital’s OB and delivery plans, Duffy added.

It would be natural for Southern Regional to have questions, considering its location in Riverdale makes it a natural choice for expectant moms in Fayette who don’t want to trudge into Atlanta to deliver their children. Part of the problem for Southern Regional was that Henry Medical Center previously won approval for 24 additional labor and delivery beds, it was noted in state documents.

Beginning in summer of 2006, local expectant moms won’t have to go far to deliver, as that’s when the service should be offered by Fayette Piedmont.

“This is great news for our whole family,” Duffy said.

The hospital’s plans include a seven-bed obstetrics unit with three labor, delivery and recovery suites in addition to cesarean section suites. The unit also would have two triage spaces for obstetrics patients, a nine-bassinet general care nursery and a five-bassinet specialty care nursery, otherwise known as a neonatal intensive care unit.

The only “delay” the hospital has now in bringing the OB and delivery services here is waiting for its new clinical building to be finished so current departments can be moved into the new building to create more room, Duffy said.

“If there are any delays, it will be a construction issue,” Duffy said.

Duffy noted that Southern Regional began the dialog with Piedmont Fayette Hospital after initially filing the appeal. The appeal came after the state’s Department of Community Health ruled Piedmont Fayette could go ahead with its plans.

Cook, who has been with Piedmont Fayette since its inception, said there was a desire from the start to offer OB and delivery services. But officials deemed it too politically risky to go through the approval process at the outset, so OB and delivery services were left out of the hospital’s initial offerings, Cook said.

Now, the hospital’s operating room is so busy that it is creating the capability to have more resources for services that would also be used by the OB and delivery unit, such as the hospital’s blood bank, Cook said.

“We’ve been waiting for it for a long time,” Cook said.