TriState Health announced that its certified nurse-midwives, Andrea Hedrick and Nicole Jones, will be unable to provide labor and delivery care at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho until at least August.
TriState is just a few miles away from St. Joe’s in Clarkston, Washington.
St. Joe’s in Lewiston has always required 24/7 collaborative physician coverage as a condition of midwifery delivery privileges, Hedrick said.
But this month, one of the two collaborative physicians dropped from that coverage.
Prior to July, Jones and Hedrick delivered babies at St. Joe’s with Dr. Lindsay Kern, a TriState employee, and Dr. Alex Watson, a St. Joe’s employee, providing collaborative coverage. Kern, Jones and Hedrick provided prenatal care at TriState, which does not have a labor and delivery unit.
On June 2, the nurse-midwives said they were notified that Watson would no longer be providing that coverage. Without consistent coverage, Hedrick said, she and Jones can’t maintain their privileges.
“We initially thought, ‘Well, that's OK, at least we can do maybe 10 days a month and work with Dr. Kern until we figure it out,’” Hedrick said. “But you cannot do that. It's either on or it's off.”
Until Jones and Hedrick regain those privileges, expectant mothers have been meeting with providers to understand their options, said TriState spokesperson Rebecca Mann. That includes St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, as well as alternative facilities in the region.
“For any patient who chooses to seek care outside the Lewis-Clark Valley, we are providing a complete copy of their records to ensure continuity of care and no gaps in their medical history,” Mann wrote.
The change has been especially hard for patients who were specifically seeking a midwife to deliver their baby, Jones said, and several have opted to deliver elsewhere.
“Multiple of (Hedrick’s) patients are returning patients,” Jones said. “(It’s hard) telling them this news that they no longer will be able to see us for delivery, especially with such a tight, or kind of a really tight, timeline that we were given.”
The midwives hope to be able to return to deliveries in the near future. TriState recently hired Caroline Rolofson, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, who will join the obstetrics and gynecology team in August, Mann said.
“She will hold OB privileges at St. Joseph's, will deliver babies there, and will participate in the shared OB on-call rotation alongside Dr. Kern,” Mann wrote. “Importantly, she will also serve as a collaborating physician for our certified nurse-midwives, which is a critical step toward restoring their full delivery privileges.”
“I just want midwifery care to be available for women if they choose it,” Hedrick said. “It's a bummer, because so much is out of our control.”
Mann said TriState is working to get the midwives’ full privileges reinstated as quickly as possible, and that she is confident St. Joe’s will reinstate full privileges for the nurse-midwives once more physicians are able to share collaborative coverage.
“We cannot speak to St. Joseph's credentialing timeline, but given the direct impact this situation is having on patients and families in our community, we are hopeful that process will be carried out as thoroughly and as quickly as possible,” Mann said.
In a statement posted July 3, St. Joe’s said the hospital remains committed to providing safe and high-quality care, and that patients will continue to be cared for by the hospital’s on-call obstetrics provider during their hospital stay.
