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At Astria Health, we are concerned about the needs of our community, especially in Toppenish. We watched the Toppenish City Council meeting tonight. We wanted to address our community members' passionate and heartfelt pleas and clear up some misinformation that was shared about Astria Toppenish Hospital. We appreciate your help in informing our community about vital healthcare services.
First, we want to thank those who shared their stories. It takes great courage to stand up and speak out about these important issues. We are empathetic and understand their concerns. We are doing all we can to ensure the viability of Astria Toppenish Hospital.
We absolutely believe that the Toppenish community needs and deserves labor and delivery, prenatal care, and pediatric services. All three of these services are linked together to provide the safest fetal and maternal outcomes.
The work of the OB/GYNs and our labor and delivery nurses in the community is critical, and we could not have kept this service line going as long as we did without their hard work and dedication.
Astria Toppenish Hospital is not closing.
We are devastated that we had to close labor and delivery services at Astria Toppenish Hospital. We fought long and hard to keep these services open for years. Unfortunately, there came the point where we needed to close it. We have no plans to close Astria Toppenish Hospital. We are open and treating patients right now.
Pregnant patients can receive immediate, safe care in the emergency room.
Patients in active labor or with pregnancy concerns can still come to our Emergency Room in Toppenish to be evaluated and seen. There will still be prenatal services in Toppenish through the local OB/GYN providers.
Our Emergency Department and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) work closely together to ensure we can respond to pregnancy emergencies. If a baby needs to be delivered, our highly skilled emergency room providers and nurses are trained to do so. We will stabilize and transfer patients and their babies for follow-up care to either Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, Astria Sunnyside Hospital or the hospital of their choosing. We also work closely with Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and Kadlec in the Tri-Cities for babies needing a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). We will continue transporting patients as quickly as possible to receive more robust labor and delivery services.
We are delivering babies at Astria Sunnyside Hospital.
Our Family Birth Center in Sunnyside is open and ready to accept new patients to deliver their babies.
Astria Toppenish Hospital still provides pediatric care.
We are not discontinuing pediatric care. We employ a pediatrician who treats patients in the emergency room. We are still recruiting additional pediatricians.
We have full-time nursing positions open and ready to staff at Astria Health.
We deeply care about the needs of our nurses. We have met for countless hours in negotiations with the Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA), our hospital WSNA representatives, and employed nurses several times over the past 12 months.
We negotiated a new contract during the summer of 2022 with the nursing union and are adhering to terms exactly as outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement as agreed upon by the nursing staff.
Posted January 09, 2023