Anaheim : Loss Prompts Closing of UCI Birthing Center

The UC Irvine Birthing Center will close next month after several years of financial losses, medical center officials announced Tuesday.

The severe overcrowding of Orange County maternity wards that led to the creation of the birthing center in 1991 has disappeared, according to Dr. Thomas Garite, director of the center and chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at UCI Medical Center.

“I couldn’t have predicted this if my life depended on it,” Garite said. “All of us could have saved a lot of money if we had known this would happen.”

The birthing center lost $1.5 million during the 1994-95 fiscal year, and deliveries have fallen from 90 a month to an average of 30. Three of the center’s seven nurse-midwives will be transferred to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where alternative birthing procedures will be available for low-risk patients.

In June, 1990, overcrowding at the medical center prompted administrators to post security guards at parking lot entrances during peak periods to advise low-income women to consider going elsewhere to give birth. The medical center was delivering about 600 babies a month, twice its planned capacity.

The overcrowded conditions were caused by a growing reduction in the number of hospitals and physicians willing to treat pregnant women on Medi-Cal due to low reimbursements from the state.

But a combination of higher Medi-Cal payments and lower overall fees paid to physicians by health maintenance organizations has eased overcrowded conditions, according to Garite. By 1992, the medical center was encouraging pregnant women to go to the hospital because of a shortage of obstetrics patients for medical school students.