close
close
awsum

Ascension Wisconsin will cut some service lines at area hospitals

Neon
Ascension Wisconsin will cut some service lines at area hospitals

Ascension Wisconsin is closing a microhospital in Waukesha, labor and delivery units at Brookfield and Mequon hospitals, and inpatient mental health units at Racine and Mequon hospitals.

This is Ascension Wisconsin’s latest move to consolidate care into fewer hospitals, including services for pregnant women, heart patients and mental health patients who need to stay in the hospital overnight.

This also comes at a time when Ascension Wisconsin’s national healthcare system and its parent, Ascension, continue to struggle with major financial losses. May cyber attack.

Ascension Wisconsin will close its microhospital in Waukesha, which opened just a few years ago, in January, spokeswoman Mo Moorman confirmed. The microhospital has “consistently low volumes” in a community with good access to care from other health systems, he said.

Ascension Wisconsin aims to focus on “higher acuity, specialized care in centralized locations in southeastern Wisconsin to optimize patient care and necessary resources, including equipment and clinicians,” according to a Thursday press release.

This is Ascension Columbia St. in Mequon. It includes closing labor and delivery units at St. Mary’s Hospital-Ozaukee and Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital-Elmbrook in Brookfield.

Those patients will instead be at Ascension Wisconsin’s flagship Columbia St. Mary’s hospital or St. Mary’s on the city’s west side. He will be referred to St. Joseph Hospital.

The labor and delivery unit at All Saints Hospital in Racine will remain.

The statement did not specify a date for when the units in Brookfield and Mequon would be closed. It was stated that obstetricians and other health care providers work with patients to adjust their birth plans.

“All decisions about how we deliver care are based on what is best for our patients and communities,” Daniel Jackson, CEO of Ascension Wisconsin and senior vice president of parent company Ascension, said in the press release.

St. Mental health care for inpatients at St. Francis Hospital expands, units at other hospitals close

The health system also operates southeastern Wisconsin inpatient mental health care at Ascension St. on Milwaukee’s south side. Francis Hospital plans to consolidate it. St. Louis to expand its inpatient behavioral health center to 60 inpatient beds. Francis plans to spend $10 million.

The expansion will be completed by July.

This includes All Saints in Racine and Columbia St. in Mequon. It means closing the residential mental health units at St. Mary’s. Moorman did not provide a timeline for these closures.

Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Care Professionals, the union that represents health care workers here in St. Francis currently has about 20 residential mental health beds, but not all of them are full, he said. Smith said the unit had staffing issues that made it difficult to fill all the beds.

“Mental health in our city is very important and these individuals in our city need to be taken care of,” Smith said. “As a union, we welcome the opportunity to ensure the most vulnerable people in our community are taken care of.”

Moorman said the health system will increase its workforce to support the expansion.

In the statement, St. It was stated that St. Francis Hospital will continue to operate its emergency department, operating rooms and other inpatient and outpatient healthcare services.

Ascension is closing some cardiac cath labs

Ascension Wisconsin is also located in St. Joseph and St. Francis plans to close cardiac catheterization laboratories at his hospitals, which are critical for heart attack patients.

That means patients with chest pain will be sent to other hospitals, Smith said.

In light of the closure, Ascension plans to make cath lab services available 24/7 at Ascension SE Wisconsin Franklin Hospital. Previously, cath lab services were provided in Franklin and St. It rotated between St. Francis hospitals or was only available at certain times of the day.

“We are unhappy with the fact that St. Francis has lost so many services over the years and we do not want to see the acute care portion of St. Francis continue to decline,” said Smith, the union leader. . “The elimination of the service line is saddening for our community.”

Smith, St. The cath lab at St. Francis is scheduled to close Dec. 14, affecting the two nurses and two technicians who work there, he said.

Columbia St. in Milwaukee, according to Ascension’s press release. Cath labs at St. Mary’s, Elmbrook hospital in Brookfield and All Saints in Racine will remain.

Work and delivery units in Brookfield, Mequon are the only units most recently closed

Rumors that the labor and delivery units would be closed had been going on for several weeks.

Last year, Brookfield and Ascension hospitals in Mequon each reported just over 300 baby births. Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center.

In the past two years, Ascension has closed labor and delivery units at two other hospitals in Wisconsin: St. Francis Hospital and the Mercy campus in Oshkosh.

This has raised concerns that expectant mothers must travel further afield to give birth and may face additional health problems due to lack of access to maternity or other maternity services.

The next closest hospitals with birthing units to Brookfield hospital are Froedtert Hospital and ProHealth Waukesha Memorial Hospital, each about seven or eight miles from Brookfield’s Elmbrook campus.

Ascension’s St. St. Joseph hospital is about 10 miles east of the Elmbrook campus, and Aurora West Allis Medical Center is about 11 miles southeast.

The next closest hospital with a birthing unit to Ascension’s Ozaukee campus in Mequon is Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, about three miles north of the Ozaukee hospital.

Ascension Wisconsin defended its decision to close the units, saying overall birth rates were declining, obstetricians in those units were leaving and other nearby hospitals could provide better, safer care.

The closures also come at a time when Ascension Wisconsin is struggling to retain and recruit physicians. There is a healthcare system lost most of its primary care doctors and specialists has turned to competing health systems in recent years.

Ascension Wisconsin’s flagship, Columbia St. St. Mary’s Hospital reported losses of approximately $210 million for the year ending June 2023. Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center. This is almost seven times the reported loss from the previous year.

As for the parent company, St. St. Louis-based Ascension reported a loss of about $1.4 billion from recurring operations for the year ended June 30 this year. latest annual financial statement.

Ascension’s finances took a big hit from a May cyberattack that devastated hospitals and doctors’ offices across the country for more than a month, its financial filing said.

Related Posts