Nurses protest closure of vital maternity services at Kansas City hospital

Concerns Arise as Research Medical Center Plans to Cease Key Services

Nurses at Research Medical Center, located in Kansas City, Missouri, have voiced their concerns over HCA's decision to discontinue several vital healthcare services. The impending closure of labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care, and obstetrics emergency services is expected to limit healthcare options for new parents and their infants.

The services affected by this plan include critical care operations such as those in the level three neonatal intensive care unit, emergency obstetrics services, gynecological consultations, emergency cesarean sections, and outpatient clinics for newborns. Nurses at the facility have urged HCA to reconsider its decision to terminate these services.

Jessica Wheat, RN, who has spent eight years in the labor and delivery/postpartum unit at Research Medical Center, expressed her concerns, stating, “This is a devastating blow to our community. Shutting these services down at our hospital will leave vulnerable patients with fewer options for all kinds of care essential to pregnancy, birth, and postpartum needs. This does not mean babies won’t be born at our hospital anymore. It just means they will be born in the emergency room or on the road as patients are forced to travel to another hospital that still provides these services.”

Linda Tankersly, a neonatal intensive care unit nurse with 38 years of experience at Research Medical Center, highlighted the critical role these services play, saying, “We are an essential hospital in a part of our city that’s already underserved in so many ways. The health care workers on these units save lives on a regular basis. This shutdown takes these vital medical services away from vulnerable patients.”

The National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), representing approximately 1,000 nurses in the Kansas City region at both Research Medical Center and Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, Kansas, is advocating against the proposed service shutdowns.

The National Nurses Organizing Committee is part of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with nearly 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.

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