Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Palmdale’s Only Hospital to Shut Birthing Ward : Health care: Desert Palms administrators cite low demand, lack of profitability as reasons to close maternity facility.

Palmdale’s only hospital, Desert Palms Community, will close its maternity ward in February, leaving just one hospital in the Antelope Valley where women can give birth.

Administrators of Desert Palms said this week that obstetric care is not profitable because the 97-bed hospital facility averages only 15 deliveries a month.

The hospital, formerly known as Palmdale Hospital Medical Center, will suspend the use of its 10 obstetric beds on Feb. 1 for one year, then decide whether to reopen the maternity unit.

“Due to the low volume of deliveries and the poor financial performance of this service, we feel we have no choice but to terminate this service at this time,” Steve Schmidt, the hospital’s chief executive officer, said in a prepared statement.

He said the hospital needs 60 to 70 deliveries a month to break even on the obstetric services.

About 20 employees, primarily registered nurses, will be laid off when the maternity ward is shut down, hospital officials said. Schmidt said other hospital services, including its basic emergency room and its behavioral mental health unit, will not be affected.

Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford said Thursday that Desert Palms’ decision was a setback for the city. “I look at a population of over 100,000, and in my mind that warrants a full-service hospital,” he said.

Ledford said Palmdale officials have tried to persuade the owners of Desert Palms to relocate and expand the hospital in the city’s old downtown area, which is the focus of an urban renewal program. But Ledford said Desert Palms, which is owned by Paracelsus Healthcare Corp., rejected that idea.

The mayor said the city’s Downtown Revitalization Committee is preparing to encourage other health care providers to open a new full-service hospital in the old business district.

Desert Palms spokeswoman Carol Fryer said she could not comment on the failed relocation and expansion talks mentioned by Ledford. But she questioned whether the area could support another full-service hospital.

“The (hospital) beds that are available now are more than adequate to serve the community,” Fryer said.

Desert Palms administrators said few babies are being born at their hospital, partly because most local obstetricians prefer Lancaster’s Antelope Valley Hospital, where nearly 5,000 children were born last year.

Fryer said most obstetricians have offices in Lancaster and do not want to spend the extra time driving to and from a hospital in Palmdale. Many of Desert Palms’ maternity patients have been women who received no prenatal care but merely showed up at the hospital when they were ready to give birth, Fryer said.

She added that Desert Palms is set up to handle only only low-risk births. High-risk births are generally done at the 341-bed Antelope Valley Hospital, which has a neonatal intensive care unit to treat newborns with serious medical problems.

Lancaster has two other hospitals, Lancaster Community, which has the same corporate owner as Desert Palms, and High Desert, which is run by the county. Neither has an obstetrics unit.

Gary Cothran, a spokesman for Antelope Valley Hospital, said his facility will have no trouble handling another 10 to 15 births per month after the Desert Palms unit closes. The Lancaster hospital set an in-house record in October, when doctors there delivered 493 babies.

Cothran said his hospital tallied 4,880 deliveries in 1993 and could be staffed to handle as many as 6,500. He pointed out that county officials recently dropped plans for an obstetrics unit in the new hospital they plan to build in Lancaster.

“They felt that Antelope Valley Hospital could handle the present need and the growth in that area,” Cothran said.