WAUPACA, WI (WLUK) — Protestors gathered Friday in a push to save ThedaCare Medical Center-Waupaca’s maternity care services, but the hospital still appears ready to proceed with the closure.
There’s anxiety and uncertainty surrounding the hospital’s decision to close a unit devoted to pregnant women in our area.
ThedaCare-Waupaca is set to shut down its labor and delivery unit next month. Many women in the community are concerned what the closure will mean for their medical care and wanted to make their voices heard.
“It’s people who don’t live in our community making this decision,” says expecting mother Cyndia Gullickson. “We have the best breastfeeding rates in the whole ThedaCare system in Waupaca. So it’s something where they have been giving women support through their pregnancies for years and years and years, and to not have that is just cruel.”
On Friday afternoon, members of the Facebook group “Save Waupaca Labor and Delivery” protested outside ThedaCare’s headquarters in Neenah.
“It can be a traumatizing thing no matter where you are,” Gullickson says of giving birth. “It can be a super scary thing not having the doctors that you trust. Not having the people that you know there is something that is a resource we can’t give up.”
ThedaCare says one of the reasons for the unit’s closure is labor shortages.
“Shortages contribute to the decision, as I mentioned with the declining volumes, and really, obstetrical complexity increases too,” says Vice President of Critical Access Hospitals Kellie Dierdrick. “We were finding more women leave the Waupaca community to deliver their babies than stay. We are really fortunate to be a part of an integrated healthcare system because most of those women travel to ThedaCare-Neenah.”
Gullickson is pregnant with her first child and due in early March. She planned to give birth at ThedaCare-Waupaca.
“They are really pushing people to go to Neenah, but for me, Neenah is an hour and 10 minutes away — so I could be giving birth on the side of the road,” says Gullickson, adding she and others want to keep their pregnancy care local.
“I ended up going with a midwife, which I never thought I would do. I have the option of having a home birth and thankfully, I am in a position to pay for it if my insurance doesn’t cover it, but not everyone can,” Gullickson says.
At this time ThedaCare says it has no plans to keep the Waupaca labor and delivery unit open and it will close as expected Feb. 15.
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