Dive Brief:
- Atrium Medical Center in Middletown, Ohio is opening a natural childbirth center later this year, with the first deliveries projected for Dec. 1, the Cincinnati Business Journal reports.
- The $1.4 million Natural Beginnings Birth Center will be the first comprehensive birth program in a Greater Cincinnati acute care hospital.
- Construction is slated to start in October and be fully completed next spring. The waiting area of Atrium’s Family Birth Center, which now encompasses Natural Beginnings, will also be renovated, the hospital said.
Dive Insight:
Services at Natural Beginnings will include labor-coping techniques, childbirth education classes, massage therapy and aromatherapy, and labor and birth in a home-like setting. There will be board-certified nurse midwives and obstetricians on staff.
To open the center this year, some existing patient beds will be renovated to accommodate the new services. Expectant mothers began enrolling in the program Thursday.
Last year, Atrium Medical Center delivered about 850 babies.
The new birthing center will be the second by Premier Health, which opened one at Dayton’s Miami Valley Hospital in 1995.