LMH gets finances for maternity unit

Congress provides $300,000 in funding

Expectant mothers in the Douglas County area, in essence, received a $300,000 gift from the federal government in November.

Officials with Lawrence Memorial Hospital learned late last year that they had received $300,000 in congressional funding to improve the hospital’s maternity department.

Gene Meyer, president and chief executive of LMH, said the money would be used to upgrade a variety of monitoring equipment in the unit.

“It will really allow us to improve some equipment,” Meyer said. “Having the most up-to-date monitoring equipment is really an absolute necessity.”

The funding was part of Congress’ 2005 omnibus appropriations bill, an annual piece of legislation that legislators attach funding requests for specific projects in their district. Meyer said it was rare Kansas hospitals received funding as part of the bill.

“We consider it (the funding) almost unbelievable,” Meyer said. “We’re very glad that we pursued it.”

Kathy Clausing, vice president of and chief development officer at the hospital, credited Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., for championing the funding request.

“I think the community feels very positive about the direction the hospital is moving,” Clausing said. “I think Rep. Moore recognized that and felt it was a worthy project.”

The funding will jump-start a larger expansion project for the maternity unit. The department is scheduled to be expanded to 18 rooms, up from 12 currently, as part of a larger $35 million expansion project that also will address needs in the emergency and surgery departments.

The maternity department expansion is expected to cost $5.7 million. In addition to adding six labor/recovery rooms, the project will double the size of the existing post-Caesarean section patient rooms, enlarge the nursery and create an education room for prenatal and parenting classes.

LMH is seeking to expand the unit because of an increase in the number of births at the hospital. The hospital has seen a nearly 30 percent increase in births since 1997, which is shortly after the last time the hospital did a significant expansion of the unit.

The increase in births, along with an industry-wide return of allowing mothers to stay in the hospital longer during their recovery, has created a shortage of space in the unit during peak times. Meyer said the shortage, at times, forced the hospital to move new mothers out of the recovery rooms and into standard patient rooms in other parts of the hospital.

Meyer said improving the maternity unit was a key in the hospital’s strategy of keeping Lawrence residents in the city for their basic health-care needs.

“A good experience in the maternity unit is the type of thing that can bind a family for life with our institution,” Meyer said. “We’re the community hospital and people should feel very comfortable using our maternity unit.”