Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Ascension St. Vincent opened its $200 million Indianapolis maternity hospital over the weekend with a convoy of ambulances carrying mothers and babies into the new facility.
The hospital system said more than 500 staff, providers and partners participated Saturday in one of the biggest moves in its history. The transport involved moving 76 patients, including 63 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit, from the now-closed Ascension St. Vincent Women’s Hospital three blocks to the new Women and Infants Hospital. The hospital said the move took about eight hours to complete.
“Ascension St. Vincent has always been dedicated to families and to the care of women and babies,” Julie Schnieders, vice president of women’s and pediatric service for Ascension St. Vincent Indiana, said in a video statement. “We take care of the most complex moms, the most complex babies.”
Ascension St. Vincent officials hosted a media preview of the hospital in October and set Nov. 16 as the opening date. In December, Ascension said it decided to delay the move-in date and open the hospital as soon as it was “fully ready to provide the best possible care.” The hospital reason did not provide specific reasons for the delay.
Ascension said the new facility provides the highest level of care for mothers and babies with complex and critical cases while keeping moms and babies under the same roof or in the same room. The hospital has 109 private neonatal intensive care unit rooms, 30 maternity suites, and couplet rooms where both mothers and infants receive care.
“I think everybody knows in Indiana that we’re always working on improving our maternal morbidity and mortality and our infant morbidity and mortality,” Schnieders said. “So having this all together, we can take care of a whole family at one place.”
The new eight-story hospital is on the south side of Ascension St. Vincent’s 86th Street campus and is connected to the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital. The hospital system said project planners worked for a year on the transition into the new hospital.
The new 268,000-square-foot hospital replaced the Women’s Hospital on Township Line Road. The women’s hospital is one of only two Level IV perinatal centers in the state, a designation that represents the highest level of care. The other is Indiana University Health’s Riley Hospital for Children.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.