Woodhull Medical Center is planning a $20 million revamp of its labor and delivery unit to help it improve maternal health outcomes following a spate of deaths during childbirth.
The public hospital, located on the border of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, is seeking to renovate more than 11,000 square feet of labor and delivery space by expanding operating rooms and postpartum services, according to a certificate-of-need application it submitted to the Department of Health. The hospital plans to expand two C-section operating rooms to bring them up to code, upgrade six labor and delivery rooms and create an additional unit to isolate pregnant patients with infectious diseases, the filing said.
As a part of the renovation, Woodhull Medical Center is also planning to renovate a family lounge and build a nursing simulation lab to train obstetric providers how to respond to labor and delivery emergencies, according to the application.
The renovation is part of the public hospital system’s effort to reduce racial disparities in maternal health outcomes after three women of color died during childbirth in the past five years. In September, 24-year-old woman Bevorlin Garcia Barrios became the third patient to die at Woodhull due to pregnancy-related causes, raising safety concerns for patients delivering babies at the Brooklyn hospital. Sha’Asia Semple died during labor in 2020 due to a medical error, and Christine Fields died in 2023 after an emergency C-section.
The city’s maternal mortality rate has stayed stable since 2001, but racial disparities have persisted. Between 2016 and 2020, Black women were more than four times as likely to die from pregnancy-associated causes than white women – a gap that is driven by racism, including historic disinvestment in communities of color and discrimination against Black patients in health care settings, according to a report released in September by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The city’s maternal mortality review committee, which evaluates the causes of pregnancy-related deaths, found that nearly two-thirds of deaths at city hospitals were preventable.
Elected officials have sounded alarms about maternal deaths and their disproportionate impact on communities of color. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who has spoken out on numerous occasions about maternal health disparities, allocated $11 million to Woodhull Medical Center in 2022 to improve maternal health facilities, part of a larger $45 million distribution to three public hospitals in Brooklyn.
A spokesperson from H+H did not answer a question about whether its recent labor and delivery renovation was funded in part by the borough president, nor how it expects the project to reduce racial disparities. The project is under review from the Department of Health.
