Baby Boom: Silver Cross Makes Best Maternity Hospital List

NEW LENOX, IL — The business of babies is booming in New Lenox. Silver Cross Hospital was recently named by Newsweek as one of the America's Best Maternity Hospitals for 2022. Silver Cross earned four out of five ribbons in Newsweek's rankings.

Silver Cross delivered 3,100 babies in 2021, more than any other Will County hospital, according to a news release from the hospital.

To accommodate the growing number, the hospital expanded its Women and Infant Services Birthing Center from 12 to 15 private labor-delivery-recovery rooms in 2021, according to the release. In addition to such amenities as private bathrooms, sofa-sleepers, glider chairs, blanket warmers, in-room refrigerators and flat-screen TVs, the three newer rooms feature large immersion tubs for laboring moms.

“We’re proud to be among the top 350 maternity care hospitals in the country,” said Silver Cross President and Chief Executive Officer Ruth Colby. “And we’re also proud of our nickname: 'The baby hospital of Will County.' It’s a nickname we’ve earned many times over…not only by the growing number of families who choose our Birthing Center each year, but also because of the exceptional and safe care we provide to every single one.”

Newsweek’s evaluation was based on three data sources: a nationwide online survey in which hospital managers and maternity healthcare professionals (e.g., neonatal care providers and OB/GYNs) were asked to recommend leading maternity hospitals; medical key performance indicator data relevant to maternity care (e.g., a hospital's rate of cesarean births); and patient satisfaction data, according to Newsweek.