Obstetrics

The only medical program in the Antelope Valley that allows poor women to have their babies in a hospital setting, whether they have health insurance or not, will be a casualty of budget cuts, Los Angeles County health officials said Monday. The 6-year-old joint obstetrics program between county-owned High Desert Hospital , and private Antelope Valley Hospital will end Oct. 1 and is one in a series of cuts in the county's health care system to bridge the department's $655-million deficit.

KABUL, Afghanistan - For much of her life, Aqilah Hikmat had beaten the odds. In a country where women struggle to get educations and find good jobs, she was an accomplished physician, the head of the obstetrics ward at a major provincial hospital, beloved by her patients. And it was a source of enormous pride to the 49-year-old doctor that two of her four children, including a daughter, were medical students, poised to follow in her career footsteps. The day she was shot to death by a U.S. soldier along the road to Kabul, she and her husband were on their way from their restive home province of Ghazni - a dangerous trip, but one they made weekly.

Re "Supervisors Move to Close Some King/Drew Wards," Aug. 17 Hospitals in Third World countries do not have transplant teams or cardiac surgery, but they certainly have obstetrics and pediatrics. While the country is besieged with teen pregnancy, childhood obesity and other preventable pediatric ailments, the three white males sitting on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors prepare to cut essential services at King/Drew for underserved African Americans and Latinos without in-depth analysis of their actions.

Women who reported having had a fever during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to a baby who would later be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a development delay, says a major new study. But the babies of women who treated their fevers with medication fared no worse than babies whose mothers recalled having suffered no fevers at all. The findings, wrote the authors,  "suggest that anti-fever medication used to control fever during pregnancy can reduce or eliminate" the apparent link between maternal fever and autism.

For thousands of expectant mothers in Los Angeles, technicolor visions of their sons' and daughters' glorious entrance into the world can be quickly shattered upon their arrival in Ward 5L, the labor and delivery section at Women's Hospital.

Cradling her baby in her arms, 31-year-old Celia Barrera waited in the parking lot to see the pediatrician. On a gray December day, she and a dozen other low-income parents were bringing their children to a St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center pediatric health-mobile that comes here once a week. Motioning to her swelling girth, Barrera said she too could use a checkup. More than three months' pregnant, she had not yet seen a doctor. "Si, problemas, " Barrera sighed.

In a novel program, Los Angeles County health officials have joined forces with the private sector in a plan to divert thousands of pregnant women to private hospitals to ease the tremendous overcrowding of the county's obstetrical system. In exchange, the county has offered to cut Medi-Cal red tape for private hospitals and doctors by paying them directly for their services, then claiming reimbursement from the state under Medi-Cal guidelines.

Saying that obstetric services at Los Angeles County hospitals are "critically overloaded," county health department chief Robert C. Gates told a state medical commission Tuesday that women in labor might be turned away from county hospitals unless an immediate solution to the overcrowding problem is found.

The obstetrics ward at Centinela Freeman Regional Medical Center Memorial Campus in Inglewood will close Monday as its owners consolidate obstetrical services at a sister hospital a mile away. The closure will cut costs for the locally owned hospital system, which was bought by an investment firm, physicians and community members from Tenet Healthcare Corp. in 2004, said Cyndee Woelfle, director of business development for the hospital system.

Federal and state governments must take "immediate steps" to curb the flight of physicians and other health professionals from the practice of obstetrics and to ensure access to care for all women who need it, especially the poor, an Institute of Medicine panel recommended Wednesday. The specter of malpractice litigation represents "a serious threat to the delivery of obstetrical care in this nation," according to the committee, which conducted a two-year study for the institute.

Dr. William J. Dignam, 86, a founding member of UCLA's department of obstetrics and gynecology and a former senior associate dean for academic affairs at what is now the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, died Dec. 5 at UCLA Medical Center. The cause of death was not announced. "Dr. Dignam was an outstanding and gifted teacher and clinician who was a role model to many," said Dr. Gautam Chaudhuri, executive chairman of the obstetrics department. Born in Manchester, N.H.

When Lucinda Hughes heard she would have to drink sea moss elixir while vacationing in the Bahamas, she was certain it would make her sick. Sure enough, three months later, Hughes is very sick -- every morning -- and expecting her first baby in April. She got pregnant after she and her husband went on a three-day Procreation Vacation at a resort on Grand Bahama Island. It's part of a trend in which hotels around the world are luring couples who are trying to have a baby.

The obstetrics ward at Centinela Freeman Regional Medical Center Memorial Campus in Inglewood will close Monday as its owners consolidate obstetrical services at a sister hospital a mile away. The closure will cut costs for the locally owned hospital system, which was bought by an investment firm, physicians and community members from Tenet Healthcare Corp. in 2004, said Cyndee Woelfle, director of business development for the hospital system.

Los Angeles County health officials Friday abandoned their proposal to close the obstetric, pediatric and neonatal wards at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after belatedly discovering that the move would have cost them $29 million in government aid. The county Department of Health Services made the announcement just three days after releasing plans for an Oct. 18 public hearing on the controversial recommendations -- the final step in a two-month process.

Several elected officials on Friday condemned a proposal by a Los Angeles County agency to close obstetrics and children's wards at troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, vowing at a community meeting that the public hospital would not be downsized without a fight. "This edifice, this center, must go forward.... It's like death by a thousand cuts," U.S. Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) told the gathering of more than 100 people.

Re "Supervisors Move to Close Some King/Drew Wards," Aug. 17 Hospitals in Third World countries do not have transplant teams or cardiac surgery, but they certainly have obstetrics and pediatrics. While the country is besieged with teen pregnancy, childhood obesity and other preventable pediatric ailments, the three white males sitting on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors prepare to cut essential services at King/Drew for underserved African Americans and Latinos without in-depth analysis of their actions.

Los Angeles County health officials Friday abandoned their proposal to close the obstetric, pediatric and neonatal wards at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after belatedly discovering that the move would have cost them $29 million in government aid. The county Department of Health Services made the announcement just three days after releasing plans for an Oct. 18 public hearing on the controversial recommendations -- the final step in a two-month process.

An angry Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina scorched county health officials Tuesday for the number of malpractice cases arising from obstetrical care at county hospitals, saying that the problems have continued long after the Health Services Department pledged to correct them.

A bitterly divided Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took the first step Tuesday toward closing pediatric, obstetric and neonatology wards at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, saying it might be the last chance to save the troubled public hospital. By a 3-2 vote, the board decided to hold a state-mandated public hearing Oct. 18 to formally consider the cuts recommended by the county health department.

With a key vote scheduled for today, opposition is building to a proposal by Los Angeles County health officials to close pediatric and obstetric wards at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in an attempt to stabilize the troubled public hospital. A hospital advisory board formed by the county Board of Supervisors is lobbying against the cuts. Two of the five supervisors want to delay the vote on the plan by six weeks.