NOTUS: GOP Gov Candidate-Backed “Budget Law ‘Solidified’ a Georgia Hospital’s Decision to Shutter Its Delivery Unit”

NOTUS: GOP Gov Candidate-Backed "Budget Law 'Solidified' a Georgia Hospital's Decision to Shutter Its Delivery Unit"

Burt Jones, Chris Carr, and Brad Raffensperger also have records of opposing Medicaid expansion and backing Georgia's failed Pathways program

This morning, NOTUS detailed how D.C. Republicans' deeply unpopular budget law that Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidates Burt Jones, Chris Carr, and Brad Raffensperger support has led to the closure of a labor and delivery unit in rural Georgia, forcing expecting mothers to travel at least an hour to receive care.

The closure of St. Mary's Sacred Heart Hospital's labor and delivery unit is "one of the most visible effects of the reconciliation bill," and "Georgia mothers, lawmakers and medical experts in the region are warning that the closure would put the lives of pregnant mothers and infants at risk."

Jones, Carr, and Raffensperger have all reportedly supported D.C. Republicans' budget law that takes Medicaid away from hundreds of thousands of Georgians, raises health care costs for 1.4 million Georgians, and threatens rural hospitals and nursing homes. 460,000 Georgians will lose their health care and the state is "expected to lose about 33,600 jobs next year" because of the budget law.

The entire Republican field also has records of opposing Medicaid expansion and backing Georgia's Pathways program, which a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed has wasted taxpayer money on administrative costs rather than actually providing health care to working Georgians.

Read more from NOTUS on the devastating impacts of the GOP budget law on Georgia:

NOTUS: Trump's Budget Law 'Solidified' a Georgia Hospital's Decision to Shutter Its Delivery Unit

• St. Mary's Health Care System's management told employees in September that it would consolidate its labor and delivery services in Athens, Georgia, which is nearly an hour from Lavonia. It cited the "changing demographics" in the region and difficulty recruiting physicians to Lavonia, a rural town located in northeast Georgia in a red district. The health care system said that "recent Congressional cuts to Medicaid solidified this decision."

• The labor and delivery unit is set to close on Monday, and would mark one of the most visible effects of the reconciliation bill that became law over the summer. Georgia mothers, lawmakers and medical experts in the region are warning that the closure would put the lives of pregnant mothers and infants at risk.

• St. Mary's Sacred Heart Hospital's labor and delivery unit provides the type of services that a coalition of policymakers and activists with wide-ranging beliefs are warning will be missed.

• The hospital's labor and delivery unit is the only delivery unit in a nearly hour radius for people who live in Lavonia, which is located in Franklin County, and the surrounding towns and cities. But it's far from the only hospital now faced with tough choices about how to operate.

• A high-ranking official at St. Mary's Sacred Heart Hospital, who would only speak to NOTUS on the condition of anonymity, said patients have been stressed about trying to find a physician in a nearby city.

• "Obstetrics is a specialty," the official said. "It is not the general thing that people in emergency rooms are fixed to deal with. 
As a rule, when a pregnant patient shows up in an emergency room at a facility that has a labor delivery, they are shuffled out of that emergency room as quickly as possible."

• "The ER physicians still feel ill-equipped, as do their staff, to handle any of the complications that arise from pregnancy and labor," the official added.

• Current and former staff told NOTUS that the hospital typically delivered more than 300 babies a year, and that the majority of the women who visited the unit relied on Medicaid for service.

• "A lot of our mothers who were going to the gynecologist OB doctor there in Lavonia and planning to deliver there at St. Mary's, they have just been very upset, very emotional about losing that care," Tammy Frye, the executive director of the Hart Life Pregnancy Care Center, an anti-abortion organization, told NOTUS. "Now they're having to find a doctor that's going to be at least an hour away, or an hour 15 minutes away."

• "I feel like some mothers may opt out on the prenatal care that they're gonna need because of transportation issues," Frye continued.

Read the full story at NOTUS.

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