Centra Southside Community Hospital (CSCH) will discontinue its labor and delivery services in December as part of a consolidation of women’s health care with Centra’s Lynchburg facilities, citing nationwide shortages of obstetricians and declining birth rates that have made it increasingly difficult to sustain the service locally.
Hospital Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Angelo said the decision, while difficult, was driven by persistent staffing shortages and the need to ensure patients receive consistent, safe care.
“We’ve had OB recruitment challenges for some time now, where we get staffed and then somebody leaves,” Angelo said. “But these shortages are not unique to Centra.”
According to national data Angelo shared, 537 hospitals stopped delivering babies between 2010 and 2022, and more than 100 rural hospitals have ended delivery services since 2020.
“By 2030, there will be a shortage of 5,000 OB doctors nationally,” he said. “That will balloon to 9,900 by 2037. We expect by 2035, the supply shortage is expected to meet only about 82% of the demand nationally. And that just goes back to why this is not unique to us.”
Angelo said local conditions mirror those trends.
“We’ve seen a 25% decline over the last decade in deliveries locally,” he said. “It isn’t because we’ve lost market share — it’s really just been a decline in births, like you’re seeing across the country.”
In 2024, Centra Southside delivered fewer than 200 babies, a figure Angelo said underscores the challenge of maintaining round-the-clock obstetric coverage.
“When you’re only delivering less than one baby a day, there’s a lot of resources that have to go into that,” he said. “When somebody leaves, it causes a big hole. And then we’re struggling to figure out — are these two people gonna cover it.
These situations often mean the hospital has to find contract doctors, called locums, to fill in until someone is hired. But Angelo said finding those doctors has also become problematic.
“We want to make sure that if a mother is coming here to birth, and we are telling everybody that we have labor and delivery services, that they can always count on us,” Angelo said. “And that has been challenging in the last year.”
Under the consolidation plan, Centra Southside will no longer deliver babies after Dec. 19, with all labor and delivery services shifting to Centra Virginia Baptist Hospital in Lynchburg.
“We will not deliver anyone after Dec. 19,” Angelo said. “We don’t want somebody to deliver on the 19th, right, and then we don’t have providers on the 20th.”
Angelo said every patient currently receiving prenatal care is being personally contacted to help transfer care to new providers prior to Dec. 19.
“We are personally calling every patient that’s pregnant currently to let them know the change that’s coming and to assist them with moving their care over to a new provider,” he said.
To help maintain continuity, Angelo said Centra in partnership with Central Virginia Health Services, a federally qualified health clinic located across the street from the hospital, will expand prenatal services there.
“We already put midwives in that clinic.That helps with some of this prenatal care,” Angelo said. “We’re gonna bolster that up and actually add another day where we have midwife coverage a third day of the week there.”
Those midwives are part of Centra’s team that also serves Lynchburg, allowing patients to see the same providers during prenatal visits and at delivery.
“What’s good about the midwives seeing these patients and the federally qualified health clinic is they’re Centra midwives,” he said. “They’re the same midwives that deliver babies in Lynchburg at Centra Virginia Baptist Hospital. So there’ll be some continuity of care there.”
In addition to labor and delivery, gynecological services provided through Centra Medical Group’s Farmville office will also be consolidated with the Lynchburg practice.
“That office is the office that we’re gonna consolidate with the Lynchburg practice,” Angelo said. “We are working with the doctors currently. They may want to provide some care locally and in Lynchburg. We’re still working through that.”
The decision on whether some gynecological care can remain in Farmville is expected within the next week.
As for employees, Angelo said the hospital’s goal is to find positions for all affected staff.
“Our goal is to find a different job, a like job for all of them,” he said. “We’re working on that currently.”
He said Centra has openings locally and in Lynchburg and will work with each employee to ensure a smooth transition.
“We have contracted nurses here, and they can slip into those roles if they wish,” he said. “There’s jobs in Lynchburg too, if they wanted to apply for one of those.”
For emergency cases involving pregnancies, Angelo said Centra Southside’s emergency department is trained to stabilize and care for mothers until transfer, if necessary.
“Anyone that comes in, we do medical screening and determine where they’re at in their pregnancy,” he said. “If it’s imminent, we would deliver them in the staffed area and then we would transfer them to the healthcare institution of their choice.”
Angelo acknowledged the emotional weight of the decision.
“We care about our folks, and we care about the community and our patients very much, and this was a difficult and hard decision,” he said. “We’ll continue to try to work on the best transition plan possible to where patients have continuity of care, and we can move our employees into like jobs.”
Centra spokeswoman Emelyn Gwynn emphasized that the change does not indicate Centra Southside is closing. The hospital recently broke ground on an emergency department expansion and continues to invest in local inpatient and surgical services.
“Our ER is busy every day, and so is our inpatient side,” Angelo said. “We’ve been full most days for the last few months, and we’re the only healthcare institution for an hour in any direction. We’re gonna continue to take care of our community.”
“This is just an unfortunate step in time and what we had to do for all the reasons I’ve already cited,” he said. “You’ve got to do the things that will continue to help you grow and take care of your community, and that’s what we want to do.”