By JUSTIN MCCALLUM

With a deadline approaching, hospital union leaders and their local City Councilman are pressuring the city to re-open North Central Bronx Hospital’s maternity ward on time or risk losing the medical service.  

“We come together this morning to get this done, to hold them to a timeframe,” said Councilman Andy King, flanked by hospital union leaders in front of the hospital on Feb. 25. “We’re here to remind NCBH that they have a responsibility not only to themselves, not only to jobs, but more importantly, to the residents who rely on their services every single day.”

The ward closed last August over concerns there weren’t enough doctors to tend to expectant moms. The remaining physicians were re-located to area hospitals, which resulted in overcrowding. Activists rallied in November to convince NCBH brass to re-open the ward with new maternity physicians on hand.  NCBH agreed to re-open the ward, with the city Department of Health giving it an April 30 deadline or risk permanent closure.

Director of New York State Nurses Association Jill Furillo is outraged at the prospect that these resources for expectant mothers could disappear altogether. “We reject the idea that the Department of Health services would decertify any of the beds that are needed in this community,” she said. “Bronx moms need the NCBH neonatal unit to open on time and with no further delays. A soon-to-be mother with a complicated pregnancy does not deserve a long commute to her doctor, and to wait in long lines and in overcrowded rooms.”

Before it closed, the maternity ward at NCBH delivered 1500 babies in 2012, which amounted to 10 percent of childbirths in the Bronx. Since its closing, other area hospitals have had to pick up the slack, resulting in overcrowding, long waits, and life threatening situations for mothers and newborns.

“If you’re going to get a surgical procedure like a heart transplant, you can travel a few miles, but if you’re in labor you can’t do that,” said Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, a head nurse at the neighboring Montefiore Medical Center. “You have to have something on location, otherwise you’re going to have taxicab deliveries. It’s really dangerous.”

Sheridan-Gonzalez described how area hospitals are seeing a spike in precipitous births in facilities not meant for delivery and labor services. Rather, many are being forced to give birth in emergency rooms, discomforting expectant moms and their attending doctors. “Fifteen hundred births don’t get absorbed easily,” she said.

Edwin Diaz, a contract worker with 1199SEIU, depicted the problem as a moral, life and death issue, which was recognized by longtime resident and hospital advisory board member Fay Muir. “I hear it every day how pregnant women are facing difficulties having to travel for services that they used to have here that were taken away,” Muir said. “I think it’s so important they keep to the timeline. They promised it to us in April; we need it in April, we deserve better.”

A spokesman for NCBH assured the Norwood News that the restructuring of the labor and delivery services is on track, with the November appointment of Dr. Michael Zinaman as chairman of the OB-GYN service and recruitment of senior level service providers.

“In January, Dr. Zinaman provided the hospital’s community advisory board with an update on his plans,” the spokesman wrote in an email to the Norwood News. “We are poised to finalize that plan [this month] and expect to retain sufficient senior level providers to permit us to resume labor and delivery services by the end of the summer.”

The city Department of Health was unavailable to comment on whether this move was enough re-certify the 1500 beds. Nevertheless, King remained hopeful at the prospects for NCBH given community engagement on the issue. “This is the first part of our public conversation,” King said. “We want to make sure everyone is informed, so we can all participate and make sure the community is served the way we want it to be.”