BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) — A New Orleans-based well being care system will cease delivering infants after this month at a hospital it operates on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Ochsner Well being System began managing Hancock Medical Middle in 2013. Then in April 2018, the hospital in Bay St. Louis was renamed Ochsner Medical Middle-Hancock.

Hancock County appearing administrator Jimmie Ladner instructed the Solar Herald this week that Ochsner had notified the county of its choice to shut the labor and supply division. The well being system cited a comparatively low variety of births and the departure of the obstetrician who had delivered infants on the hospital.

“The county is actually disillusioned any time any service is faraway from the hospital,” Ladner mentioned.

Ladner mentioned offering labor and supply providers shouldn’t be required by Ochsner’s lease settlement with Hancock County, so county officers had no energy to dam or approve the hospital system’s choice.

Tim Riddell, Ochsner’s regional medical director for the Mississippi Gulf Coast, mentioned in an e-mail to the newspaper that the well being system “should frequently evolve our service choices to higher meet these wants at this time and sooner or later.”

“Whereas we are going to now not offer labor and supply providers at Ochsner Medical Middle-Hancock, we stay dedicated to offering ladies’s and kids’s care,” Riddell mentioned.

Waveland Mayor Mike Smith had not but heard concerning the closure of the division when he was contacted by the Solar Herald.

“My oldest youngster was born at Hancock Medical,” Smith wrote in a textual content message. “I do know that it’s troublesome sufficient attending to the hospital if it’s shut by if you’re in labor, however having to drive a further half-hour or extra additional would make that much more troublesome.”

Ochsner Medical Middle-Hancock is the one hospital with labor and supply providers in Hancock County, in response to the Mississippi State Division of Well being. The closest hospitals providing these providers are two in Gulfport. A type of is about 17 miles (27.4 kilometers) from the hospital in Bay St. Louis. The opposite is about 29 miles (46.7 kilometers) away.

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