Dear Fayette Community Friends and Neighbors:
We need your support! Piedmont Fayette Hospital recently filed an application with the state of Georgia to expand our existing five-bed Level II neonatal unit and to establish a Level III neonatal service, ensuring our capacity to care for those fragile newborns who are born in our community.
Unfortunately, Southern Regional Medical Center has opposed our request to expand these services, which could result in the continued need to separate delicate newborns from their mothers and families.
Since September 2006, when we started offering obstetric services, nearly 6,500 babies have been born at Piedmont Fayette Hospital, and the need for our services has grown tremendously. The need for Level II neonatal care is exceeding our existing capacity.
In addition, often, we have babies who require transfer to another facility for the more specialized care that only a Level III neonatal service can provide. Other times, mothers have to travel for sometimes over an hour to other facilities outside our community to give birth, anticipating the need for Level III care for their baby or to visit and assist in the care of their sick or premature newborn.
In order to accommodate current community needs and future county growth (projected at 17 percent over the next five years), we must expand our services to better care for our patients and families.
We understand the anguish in separating newborn babies from their families.
Piedmont Fayette Hospital wants to reduce the frequency of this difficult situation by establishing the proper facilities to care for those babies closer to home. Currently, many of those babies go to Piedmont Hospital or Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Some who require open-heart or other highly specialized surgery would always receive care at Children’s Healthcare.
However, access to specialized care closer to home for babies needing Level III care for several weeks makes the best sense for those babies and their families as well as improving their chance for a better outcome and more fulfilling life. That is why many physicians in our community, including several with Children’s Healthcare, support our applications.
Help us Keep Babies in Fayette by visiting KeepBabiesinFayette.org for more information on why these services are needed, to voice your support, share your story, and to electronically sign our petition. We must communicate the importance of keeping babies born in Fayette County closer to home, and with their families, as they receive the care they need.
At Piedmont Fayette Hospital, we made a promise to do everything within our power to keep you and your families well. The Piedmont Promise extends to every new life born in our facility, and we remain committed to expanding our services so that even the tiniest lives can have the same level of care you have come to expect from us.
W. Darrell Cutts
President and CEO
James C. Sams, M.D.
Chairman, Board of Directors
Fayetteville, Ga.
