National Nurses United

In a recently released report titled "Dangerous Descent: How Ascension Betrays its Mission by Gutting Care for Pregnant Patients and Babies," NNU concluded that Ascension, one of the country's largest nonprofit Catholic hospital chains, has eliminated labor and delivery services at 16 hospitals since 2012, which represents about 26 percent of their units nationwide. Since just 2022, Ascension has cut five labor and delivery units. NNU found that the closures tended to happen in urban communities of color with higher rates of poverty and Medicaid patients, as well as areas where Ascension had greater market dominance. In communities where Ascension still provides obstetrics services to pregnant patients and babies, nurses report that they are severely understaffed, under-resourced, and specialties within obstetrics, such as antepartum and nursery care, are being discontinued. Ascension is also removing depart- ments like higher levels of neonatal intensive care services and consolidating them at regional facilities. "As a mission-based organization that frequently promotes its commitment to mater- nal health care, Ascension's services do not match its rhetoric," reads the report. "Are they hypocrites? Oh heavens, yes," said LaWare, who now works at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, a facility where nurses have unionized and are fighting for their first contract. "They are always talking about their mission to serve the poor and vulnerable. I find it despicable. I'm not surprised by what I know about our own labor and delivery, but what I haven't known is this systematic plan that they've had in place. They've gutted those hos- pitals and used them to get money that they don't then give back to the community. They make sure that they take their profit and take care of the wealthier communities." Lisa Watson, a medical ICU RN at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kan. where nurses are also fighting to win their first contract, had a similar perspective on Ascension's actions. She pointed out that in addition to making pregnant patients travel farther, shutting down obstetrics units usually also means forcing patients to change doctors or providers—perhaps O C T O B E R | N O V E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 3 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 27 Holy Hypocrites Ascension, one of the country's largest Catholic hospital chains, betrays its mission by dramatically slashing obstetrics services nationwide. BY L U C I A H WA N G W hen ascension closed Bernadette LaWare's previous workplace, Bracken- ridge Hospital in Austin, the labor and delivery RN and her coworkers worried what would happen to their pregnant patients who depended upon that facility. "All of our patients were now expected to go to Seton," said LaWare, who has worked in obstetrics for 30-plus years. "And we had lots of discussions about how that was going to happen when Seton was on a really difficult public transportation line and wasn't going to be as convenient. Brackenridge was much more accessible. It was something that people knew. People who didn't have cars. People who didn't speak English." The 2016-2017 closure of Brackenridge turned out to be just one of a massive wave of obstetrics department closures that Ascension imposed on communities across the country over the past decade to boost its earnings, researchers at National Nurses United have found. While the trend over this time has been for U.S. hospitals to shutter obstetrics departments even as U.S. infant and maternal mortality rates rise to sky-high levels compared to similarly wealthy countries, Ascension still stands out as being one of the "worst offenders."

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