Historical March 1987 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
St. Louis Regional Medical Center will admit the first patients to its new obstetrics and nursing unit March 30, it was announced Tuesday. Regional has been operating since its inception in July, 1985, without an obstetrics department and has sent its patients to three other hospitals to have their babies.
City residents, who are now being delivered at Lutheran Medical Center, will begin going to the Regional hospital at 5535 Delmar Blvd., at 7 a.m., Monday, March 30. St. Louis County patients will be delivered at Regional starting May 18.
They have been going to Deaconess Hospital.
On July 6, Regional will begin delivering high-risk patients who would previously have been delivered at Barnes Hospital. Regional’s president and chief executive officer, Robert B. Johnson, announced the plans at a meeting of the St. Louis Regional Health Care Corp. board of directors at the hospital Tuesday.
The phasing-in of the obstetrical department will assure an adequate level of nursing and physician staffing, Johnson said.
The $3.3 million renovation of the third floor of Regional’s main hospital building has been under way since last April.
The floor will be a combined women’s and babies’ center and will hold 32 postpartum beds and 32 beds for normal babies; 18 gynecology beds; 12 beds in a neonatal intensive care unit and 12 beds for intermediate neonatal care; four delivery rooms and nine labor beds.
With the exception of some of the gynecology patient rooms, the floor has been completely renovated. Regional officials said they expected to deliver 3,000 babies a year at the hospital. Johnson told the board the hospital would need 127 nurses to staff the 50-bed floor. About half have been recruited he said, adding that an advertising campaign to recruit nurses is getting an “excellent response.” Regional is offering recruitment bonuses totaling $1,000 to all nurses who are hired and complete six months of satisfactory service. Regional’s hospital occupies facilities long known as St. Luke’s Hospital, and later operated as St. Luke’s Hospital East and Charter Hospital.
The Regional Health Care Corp. provides medical care for the medically indigent under contracts with St. Louis and St. Louis County, and also treats private patients.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, March 1987.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1987_03.pdf, printed page(s) 5; PDF page(s) 5.
