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A nearly $300 million medical pavilion in Lanham, Md., won state regulatory approval Thursday, paving the way for a significant expansion of labor and delivery services in Prince George’s County.
The Maryland Health Commission, an independent regulatory agency, approved plans for the new pavilion at Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center. The project will consist of two floors dedicated to labor and delivery and women’s health.
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The pavilion will increase the county’s number of obstetric beds from 34 to 55, said Jeanne Marie Gawel, acting chief for the MHC’s Certificate of Need program.
The facility is a welcome addition to Prince George’s County, where maternal mortality rates are higher than the state average and where residents have often sought birthing options outside the county because of the lack of capacity there. More than 80 percent of Prince Georgians seek obstetric care in neighboring jurisdictions, Gawel noted. Prince George’s, she said, is the second-most populous county in Maryland, with the second-highest birthrate.
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The need for more obstetric care was obvious in the data, Deneen Richmond, president of Doctors Community Medical Center, said in an interview just hours after the unanimous vote by the commission. Hospital leaders were persuaded by an assessment of data from all levels of government that the county required additional behavioral health and obstetric services, she said.
Like many women in the county, Richmond gave birth to two of her sons in D.C. because her care provider had a practice in Prince George’s but had admitting privileges at a hospital in the District, she said. That was more than 30 years ago, when there were probably even fewer local options, she said.
More recently, County Council member Krystal Oriadha (D-District 7) brought attention to the issue as the council’s first pregnant member and a mom to a newborn, underscoring how she couldn’t give birth in the county she serves.
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MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center and University of Maryland Capital Region Medical Center are the two hospitals that provide obstetric care in Prince George’s County.
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From 2008 to 2017, the county’s pregnancy-related maternal mortality rate was 28.6 deaths per 100,000 live births — higher than Maryland’s rate of 26.9. Black, non-Hispanic women had the highest maternal death rate of any group, according to a 2019 report on maternal and infant health by the Prince George’s County Health Department.
Oriadha had to go out of the county to give birth to her son in October because her county-issued health insurance plan didn’t cover the services she needed before birth in Prince George’s. Giving birth outside the county was still a harrowing experience, she said, given her challenging delivery. She welcomes expanded options for obstetric services in her majority-Black county.
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The county ranks 24th out of Maryland’s 24 counties for clinical care — anything relating to the direct medical treatment or testing of patients — according to data from University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute.
Oriadha wants the council, which also serves as the county board of health, to be more involved in ensuring medical systems are providing the best possible care and holding those institutions accountable, she said.
Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center currently holds a “C” rating from the Leapfrog Group, an independent nonprofit focused on quality, safety and transparency in the health system.
Richmond noted that grades from third-party organizations can often lag behind actual improvement. The hospital has recently hired more community-based surgeons, added new medical teams and opened a gynecology practice in Greenbelt.
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The first delivery in the soon-to-be constructed pavilion could come in 2028 or 2029, she said.
Funding for the project is expected to come from multiple pots. Nearly $34 million will come from Luminis’s cash reserves, $5 million from philanthropic support and $152 million in interest income from bonds. The state will provide an estimated $95 million.
“[Part of this] is allowing us to modernize into the new pavilion. We want to make sure we offer state-of-the-art care here,” she said. “There’s a lot of upside to this. It’s not just for pregnant moms. There are a lot of other benefits.”
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