Sarah Volpenhein
Ascension Wisconsin is closing a Waukesha micro-hospital, labor and delivery units at its Brookfield and Mequon hospitals, and inpatient mental health units at its Racine and Mequon hospitals.
It's the latest move by Ascension Wisconsin to consolidate care to fewer hospitals, including services for pregnant women, cardiac patients, and mental health patients needing overnight hospital stays.
It also comes as Ascension, the national health system and parent of Ascension Wisconsin, continues to struggle with large financial losses amid a May cyberattack.
Ascension Wisconsin will close its micro-hospital in Waukesha in January, which only opened a few years ago, spokesperson Mo Moorman confirmed. He said the micro-hospital had "consistently low volumes" in a community with good access to care from other health systems.
Ascension Wisconsin aims to concentrate "higher acuity, specialized care at centralized locations in southeast Wisconsin to optimize patient care and necessary resources, including equipment and clinicians," according to a Thursday press release.
That includes closing the labor and delivery units at Ascension Columbia St. Mary's Hospital-Ozaukee, in Mequon, and Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital-Elmbrook, in Brookfield.
Those patients will instead be directed to Ascension Wisconsin's flagship hospital Columbia St. Mary's on Milwaukee's east side, or to St. Joseph Hospital on the city's west side.
The labor and delivery unit at All Saints Hospital in Racine will remain.
The release did not give a date by which the units in Brookfield and Mequon will close. It said obstetricians and other providers were working with patients to adjust their birth plans.
“All decisions about how we deliver care are led by what's best for our patients and communities,” Daniel Jackson, CEO of Ascension Wisconsin and senior vice president at the parent company Ascension, said in the release.
St. Francis Hospital inpatient mental health expanding, units at other hospitals closing
The health system also plans to consolidate its southeast Wisconsin inpatient mental health care at Ascension St. Francis Hospital on Milwaukee's south side. It plans to spend $10 million at St. Francis to expand its inpatient behavioral health center to up to 60 inpatient beds.
The expansion is to be completed by July.
That means the closure of inpatient mental health units at All Saints in Racine and Columbia St. Mary's in Mequon. Moorman did not give a timeline for those closures.
St. Francis already has around 20 inpatient mental health beds, though not all are filled, said Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the union representing health care workers there. The unit has experienced staffing issues that make it hard to fill all the beds, Smith said.
"Mental health in our city is very important and those individuals in our city need to be taken care of," Smith said. "We, as a union, welcome the ability to make sure that the most vulnerable people in our community are going to be taken care of."
Moorman said the health system would grow its workforce to support the expansion.
St. Francis Hospital will continue to operate its emergency room, operating rooms, and other inpatient and outpatient health services, the release said.
Ascension closing some cardiac cath labs
Ascension Wisconsin also plans to close cardiac catheterization labs, which are critical for patients having heart attacks, at St. Joseph and St. Francis hospitals.
That means patients experiencing chest pains will be sent to other hospitals, Smith said.
In light of the closure, Ascension plans to make cath lab services available 24/7 at Ascension SE Wisconsin Franklin Hospital. Previously, cath lab services alternated between the Franklin and St. Francis hospitals, or were only available during certain times of the day.
"What we aren’t happy about is the fact that St. Francis has lost so many services over the years and we don't want to see the acute care part of St. Francis continue to decrease," said Smith, the union leader. "Taking away that service line, it’s sad for our community."
The cath lab at St. Francis is slated to close Dec. 14 and will affect two nurses and two techs working there, Smith said.
The cath labs at Columbia St. Mary's in Milwaukee, Elmbrook hospital in Brookfield and All Saints in Racine will remain, according to Ascension's press release.
Labor and delivery units in Brookfield, Mequon only the latest to close
The labor and delivery units closures had been rumored for several weeks.
Last year, the Ascension hospitals in Brookfield and Mequon each reported a little over 300 baby deliveries, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center.
In the last two years, Ascension has closed the labor and delivery units at two other hospitals in Wisconsin: St. Francis Hospital and the Mercy campus in Oshkosh.
That has raised concerns that expectant mothers must travel further to give birth, and may face additional health challenges because of lack of access to delivery services or other obstetrical care.
The next closest hospitals with delivery units to the Brookfield hospital are Froedtert Hospital and ProHealth Waukesha Memorial Hospital, each about seven or eight miles from the Elmbrook campus in Brookfield.
Ascension's St. Joseph hospital is about 10 miles east of the Elmbrook campus, and Aurora West Allis Medical Center is about 11 miles southeast.
The next closest hospital with a delivery unit to Ascension's Ozaukee campus in Mequon is Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, about five miles north of the Ozaukee hospital.
Ascension Wisconsin has defended its decision to close the units, saying that overall birth rates have declined, its obstetricians in those units were leaving, and its other nearby hospitals could provide better, safer care.
The closures also have come as Ascension Wisconsin struggles to keep and hire physicians. The health system has lost many of its primary care doctors and specialists in recent years to competing health systems.
Columbia St. Mary's Hospital, Ascension Wisconsin's flagship hospital, reported about $210 million in losses in the year ending in June 2023, according to the latest data available from the Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center. That's nearly seven times its reported losses over the prior year.
As for the parent company, St. Louis-based Ascension reported about $1.4 billion in losses from recurring operations in the year ended June 30 of this year, according to its latest annual financial statement.
Ascension's finances took a major hit from the May cyberattack that devastated its hospitals and doctor's office nationwide for more than a month, its financial statement says.
In Racine, I've avoided Ascension because of their terrible reputation. In the early years, Aurora was great. Over time, however, I've found doctors that have lied to me. When confronted about it, they drop me as a patient. I'm very careful how I interact with them now.
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