Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville is preparing for a dramatic rise in high-risk pregnancies in Northeast Florida.
High-risk pregnancies are expected to rise 14.5% over the next decade, reflecting a trend across the country, the hospital says.
The causes are many: diabetes, high blood pressure, poor lifestyle choices, lack of health care and delayed child rearing among them.
In response, the medical center is midway through an expansion of its labor-and-delivery services. The second phase is set to accept its first patients within days.
The facility, part of the nonprofit Baptist Health system, has received $4.5 million in state funding to help with an expanded facility, whose third and final phase is expected to open in a year.
The expansion will enable more medical care for women who have high-risk pregnancies and need advanced maternal and fetal care, medical center president Nicole Thomas said.
The new facilities will expand services at Northeast Florida’s only Level IV regional perinatal health care center, a hospital that provides the highest level of care for women with high-risk pregnancies and critically ill newborns.
A high-risk pregnancy means the mother or fetus has a higher-than-average risk of experiencing a complication. About 30,000 to 50,000 pregnant women in the U.S. — 6% to 8% — have high-risk pregnancies, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found as early as 2020 that pregnancy complications had increased 16.4% and childbirth complications 14.2%.
SG2, a health care analytics company that works with Baptist, predicts increasing high-risk pregnancies in its region, pointing to more women with health issues that need services, Thomas said.
“Women have diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity — they are having children at a later age, so there’s advanced maternal age,” Thomas said. “There are more multiples being born. All of that contributes to this increase in high-risk pregnancies that we will expect to take care of over the next decade.”
The expanded labor-and-delivery services are being built in the former neonatal intensive care unit at Wolfson Children’s Hospital’s, adjacent to the medical center. The NICU moved in 2022 to the Borowy Family Tower, also on the Baptist campus, which is across the St. Johns River from downtown Jacksonville.
The total cost of the planned expansion is $25.8 million. The first phase, completed just over a year ago, added four dedicated maternity exam rooms for evaluation and observation, plus a dedicated surgical pre- and postoperative recovery area, at a cost of $5 million.
The second phase of expansion was just completed, with 12 more labor-and-delivery rooms to help mothers with high-risk pregnancies. It also is close to the operating room, with a dedicated OB-GYN. Its first patient is expected Tuesday, Thomas said.
“This essentially doubles our capacity to care for moms and babies on this floor,” Thomas said. “This new capacity also gives us the opportunity to create a dedicated antepartum unit for moms whose cases are so complex that they require hospitalization prior to delivery.”
The final phase will build out three new operating rooms, with four new labor-and-delivery rooms at a cost of $10 million. It will open in about a year, Thomas said.
“We continue to have a direct link to Wolfson Children’s Hospital, and they are the only Level IV NICU in Northeast Florida,” Thomas said. “So together, being able to take care of the moms who need that, the highest level care, and the babies who require Level IV care, we have everything our community needs for this patient population.”
Thomas also pointed to the recent closures regionally and nationwide of labor-and-delivery units that have compounded the need for pre- and postnatal services. A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association in February 2024 said more than 200 hospitals in rural areas of the U.S. have closed labor-and-delivery services over the past 10 years.
State Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, and Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, recently presented hospital official with $4.5 million in state funding for the expanded center. The rest of the total cost has included $1.5 million in private donations, plus help from Baptist Health Foundation donors, Thomas said.
