Updated 9:56 p.m.
GREENSBORO — Cone Health officials said Thursday that they are considering whether to close its Women’s Hospital building on Green Valley Road and move operations to the Moses Cone Hospital campus.
No decision has been made, but a group studying the hospital will recommend the change to the board of trustees in late September.
The committee of staff members, physicians, board members and patients has been studying the future of the 24-year-old hospital for about a year.
The 40-year-old building, which opened as a Humana hospital, needs serious renovation to keep up with changing health care needs, said Judy Schanel, the executive vice president of acute care services at Cone Health.
“It’s like your own home,” Schanel said. “Do I start renovating this thing or do I move to a new house?”
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The study also includes Moses Cone Behavioral Health Hospital on Walter Reed Drive. The committee will recommend that the hospital’s outpatient care be moved to another location. It will continue to study whether to renovate or move the hospital’s inpatient care.
The 134-bed Women’s Hospital was the state’s first free-standing women’s care hospital when it opened in 1990. It houses Cone Health’s maternity admissions, maternity care and neonatal intensive care among other services.
But the hospital, which is about 2 miles away from Moses Cone Hospital on North Elm Street, is not adjacent to such specialty services as cardiac care that the larger hospital can deliver.
“If the decision was made to relocate Women’s Hospital, it would bring them in closer proximity to specialty services that aren’t at Women’s Hospital,” Schanel said.
She said Cone Health’s goal is to upgrade care for women and prepare for changes coming over the next 20 or 30 years.
In addition, the move makes sense because fewer acute-care beds are being used at Moses Cone Hospital.
“So can we use those beds more wisely to provide better services for our community and provide a win-win situation for everyone,” she said.
Schanel was emphatic that Cone Health would never lose focus on the health care needs of women and their babies — 6,200 were delivered at Women’s Hospital last year.
“It may be closing a building,” she said, but “it’s relocating Women’s Hospital. It’s not the physical structure they’re in. It’s the people. It’s the culture and how the service is provided. What’s being discussed is relocating that.”
Because the hospital is a unique feature of Greensboro, it may be a source of some nostalgia.
But Jim Melvin, a former Greensboro mayor who used to serve on the hospital’s board, said health care is the top issue to consider.
“If there’s anything changing every day, it’s health care and health care delivery systems,” Melvin said.
Cone Health should take care to get it right if the board decides to move Women’s Hospital, said an international hospital consultant who specializes in women’s health care.
Vicki Lucas , a Baltimore-based consultant, said women’s health needs are unique and require a careful approach.
Whether it’s cardiac or cancer care, women respond differently than men, Lucas said, and any hospital should be cautious not to rapidly merge functions at the two hospitals, if it does so at all.
Many hospitals around the nation are actually building women’s care “pavilions” or other separate operations, not combining them, she said.
“I’ll give you my bias,” Lucas said. “I really believe it’s easy to lose the focus on gender-specific medicine, which is really where I see things going. If you do integrate women’s services, then you’ll lose that gender-specific standard of care.”
Posted 2:30 p.m.
GREENSBORO — A new study will recommend that Cone Health close Women’s Hospital and move its services to nearby Moses Cone Hospital, a Cone Health spokesman said today.
Doug Allred said that a year-long effort involving employees, 70 physicians, former patients and a consulting firm took a look at the renovation needs and options for Women’s Hospital, and will recommend the changes to the Cone Health Board of Trustees in late September.
Allred said the final decision lies with the board, which could suggest other alternatives.
The study also recommends moving outpatient services from Cone Behavioral Health Hospital and considering renovations or other options for the hospital.
Even if all the options are approved, Allred said, the design, permitting and construction process could take until the end of the decade.
The Women's Hospital of Greensboro opened in 1990 as North Carolina's first free-standing hospital dedicated solely to women and newborns. It was later renamed Women’s Hospital.