Washington Heights Hospital Opens New Maternal Care Center

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — A Washington Heights hospital has opened a first-of-its-kind medical facility to provide comprehensive care to women before, during and after pregnancy at a time when maternal deaths are rising in the United States.

The 5,300-square-foot outpatient facility, called the Mothers Center, will comprehensive and multidisciplinary care to women who may have medical or surgical complications during pregnancy and childbirth, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center announced. Specialists in all relevant fields will work at the center, located at the NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital campus on 165th Street and Broadway, in order to collaborate on care on a patient-by-patient basis.

The model isn't new — there are more than 20 centers in the United States following the same model for fetal care — but it has never been used to provide multidisciplinary care for mothers all in one location, hospital officials said.

"The Mothers Center serves as a national model for providing expectant mothers with a single point of access to all of the subspecialists they may need during their pregnancy," said Dr. Steven J. Corwin, president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian, said in a statement. "We are proud to offer the most comprehensive, collaborative and highest quality care available to optimize the health of women and their babies."

The Mothers Center will be equipped to treat a wide variety of complications across 15 medical specializations, hospital officials said. Some possible treatments and surgeries include lung and heart transplants, hypertension, seizure disorders and a condition that increases the risk of premature birth and mother's death called placenta accreta.

Expecting mom Ebony Boyd , 36, called the new center a "great idea." Boyd, who is six months pregnant, is able to get care at the Mothers Center from her doctor Kirsten Cleary — a high-risk maternal fetal medicine specialist — and is now able see a hematologist in the same facility. The center gives Boyd a sense of security after losing a child during an emergency c-section in 2017 to undiagnosed preeclampsia. Boyd also suffered a pulmonary embolism, which could have been potentially life threatening.

"Sometimes you have a whole lot of complications or issues with your pregnancy," Boyd said." You’ve got to bounce around from office to office. It becomes a lot. Then the more pregnant you get, the bigger you get. You're tired. Sometimes you just don't want to be all over New York City, going to four and five different doctors. It's wonderful if you can have one central location where you're there, you're taken care of, and the doctors come to you."

The Mothers Center will also provide services such as counseling, nutrition and mental health resources, consult rooms outfitted for virtual visits and integrated follow-up care after a baby is born.

The new center follows a similar model to New York Presbyterian's Carmen and John Thain Center for Prenatal Pediatrics, which focuses on fetal complications. The Mothers Center is dedicated to Carmen Thain's mother Angeles Badell, who was a leader in the study pediatric rehabilitation medicine.

Severe complications during childbirth effect more than 50,000 women every year in the United States, and the numbers are rising, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. An estimated half of all maternal deaths in the country are preventable, hospital officials said.

"Increasingly, women who are considering pregnancy or are already pregnant have significant complexities that require seamless, multidisciplinary collaboration. The reasons for this include delayed childbearing, assisted reproductive technologies and effective management of conditions that in the past would have made pregnancy ill-advised or not possible," Dr. Leslie Moroz, director of the Mothers Center said in a statement.

"The center is a phenomenal example of patient-centered care because it brings specialists to the patients while also enhancing their ability to collaborate in patient care. It is a space for providers to act as a team and be seen as a team by their patients."

Photos courtesy NewYork-Presbyterian’s healthmatters.nyp.org