The funding campaign for Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island’s new 20-room labor and delivery center has exceeded its $35 million goal, hospital officials announced last week.
The center, named the Brown University Labor and Delivery Center in honor of the University’s $5 million contribution to the campaign in 2022, will officially open this spring.
The groundbreaking on the new unit took place in May with its construction expected to wrap up by the end of this year. It will then be outfitted with necessary medical technology in time for the ribbon cutting scheduled for May 2 of next year.
“This was really a historic campaign,” said Jeffrey Cabral, the senior vice president and chief philanthropy officer at Care New England, the health network that operates the hospital. The three-year campaign received contributions from almost 2,000 individual donors and foundations. The University’s $5 million donation was the campaign’s largest, Cabral added.
“Our goal in making the 2022 gift was to help Care New England create a world-class labor and delivery center that will serve generations of families to come, provide improved resources for clinicians who provide care in the center and strengthen Rhode Island’s ability to attract top medical talent to the state,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.
The new labor and delivery center aims to create a “healthcare environment that matches and enhances the clinical excellence of Women & Infants Hospital,” Lisa Boyle, the assistant chief of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Warren Alpert Medical School, wrote in an email to The Herald.
“Our old facility was 35 years old. So much has changed since then,” wrote Boyle, citing an increase in the average maternal age, a growing number of high-risk pregnancies and the prevalence of chronic medical conditions that could further complicate births. The new center will allow caregivers to strengthen patient and family care and better address complications, according to Boyle.
The Women & Infants Hospital “is a critical piece of Rhode Island’s healthcare infrastructure,” Boyle wrote, noting that close to 80% of Rhode Island residents give birth at the facility.
The Labor and Delivery Center will also be in close proximity to WIH’s Rhode Island’s only Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which cares for more than 1,200 sick and premature newborns each year.
Alongside the new center, a no-intervention unit geared toward patients with low-risk pregnancies and a desire for minimal medical intervention will also be constructed, Cabral added. The unit will occupy a separate space on the same floor as the center, with proximity to both the labor rooms and the NICU.
Cabral credited “the support of our community” for the project’s success. Without them, Cabral added, “this project would not exist.”
The new center aims to attract and retain the “best and brightest” physicians in the country to work there, Boyle wrote. Warren Alpert students and graduates will be among the center’s trainees.
Care New England is a major teaching affiliate of Warren Alpert since Women & Infants houses the medical school’s OB/GYN department, Clark said. He added that many of the attending physicians at WIH also hold faculty appointments at the medical school.
Cabral sees the campaign as a win for Rhode Island maternal healthcare providers. “When any of our hospitals in the state succeed,” he said, “we all succeed.”
