Deaconess Health System Opens New Maternal Health Unit in Evansville

Deaconess Health System opened a redesigned maternal health unit at its Evansville campus this month, replacing shared postpartum recovery rooms with private rooms for all delivering patients and expanding neonatal intensive care capacity by six additional bassinets.

The $45 million project responds to years of steadily rising birth volume at the hospital, which has become one of the busiest delivery hospitals in southwestern Indiana as the Evansville region's population has grown. Hospital officials said the previous unit's shared recovery rooms had become a common source of patient complaints, particularly around privacy and rest during recovery.

"New parents are exhausted and going through one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives, and doing that in a shared room with another family going through their own delivery just isn't good care anymore," said Deaconess's chief of obstetrics. "Private rooms were the single most requested change from our patient satisfaction surveys for years."

The expanded neonatal intensive care unit will allow the hospital to keep more premature and medically fragile newborns close to their families rather than transferring them to Indianapolis-area hospitals with higher-level NICU capacity, a change officials said should reduce family separation during a newborn's hospital stay in many cases.

Deaconess said the hospital delivers thousands of babies annually, making the maternal health unit's capacity a persistent operational priority. Hospital administrators said the renovation was funded through a combination of health system capital reserves and philanthropic donations.