Roseland Community Hospital halts maternity care as South Side access gap widens

Roseland Community Hospital, the only hospital serving a wide stretch of Chicago's Far South Side, will stop delivering babies at the end of this month. The decision brought nurses, doctors, a Cook County commissioner and community advocates to a rally outside the hospital on Wednesday, the latest in a string of protests aimed at reversing it before labor and delivery services end at midnight on October 31.

The shutdown is formally a temporary suspension, not a permanent closure, according to a notice Roseland Chief Executive Officer Timothy K. Egan filed with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board on October 2. But hospital workers and advocates say that distinction offers little comfort, since no reopening date has been set and the hospital says reopening depends on funding that has not yet materialized.

A funding gap the hospital calls unsustainable

In his letter to state regulators, Egan wrote that "available funding, including State reimbursement and financial support, is insufficient to sustain Labor & Delivery services under current conditions." He said Roseland, a 134-bed nonprofit safety-net hospital, "cannot continue to absorb the service's operating funding gap without jeopardizing the financial stability of the Hospital and its ability to provide other essential services." The hospital pledged to reassess the unit's finances every 30 days and report its progress to regulators, and said it would pursue formal approval from the review board only if it eventually decides to discontinue labor and delivery permanently.

The suspension follows months of financial strain. Egan told trade publications this summer that Roseland was operating with "negative 65 days cash on hand" and had made payroll only after a managed-care payment arrived just in time. State lawmakers included a $16 million grant for the hospital in Illinois' fiscal 2027 budget, but the award alone was not enough to keep the maternity unit open. Roseland's own state quality-report listing shows nearly 60 percent of its inpatients are covered by Medicaid, reflecting the low-reimbursement, high-need population the hospital serves on 111th Street. The unit held a Perinatal Level II designation, meaning it could care for moderate-risk mothers and newborns but, like most community hospitals, had no neonatal intensive care unit.

Part of a broader retreat from obstetrics on the South Side

Roseland's suspension is not an isolated event. According to reporting by ABC7 Chicago, Prime Healthcare suspended obstetric services this fall at hospitals it operates in Joliet and Aurora, while Resurrection Medical Center on Chicago's Northwest Side ended maternity care on October 1. Organizers tracking the trend say at least five labor and delivery units have closed across the South Side and south suburbs since 2019; Dr. Joy West, chair of obstetrics at Roseland, has put the number of closures in the broader region at seven or eight over six or seven years.

The next-closest labor and delivery unit to Roseland, at Trinity Hospital, is itself scheduled to close in 2028. A new hospital under construction in the area is not currently planned to include a labor and delivery unit, according to ABC7's reporting, meaning the gap in obstetric coverage on the Far South Side is likely to widen rather than narrow in the coming years. Dr. West has said some patients already travel at least half an hour for prenatal and delivery care.

Who the closure affects most

Roseland sits in a part of Chicago where maternal health outcomes already lag the rest of the state. Illinois' most recent maternal mortality review, published by the Illinois Department of Public Health in late 2025 using 2021-22 data, found that Black women in Illinois were more than twice as likely as white women to die from a pregnancy-related cause, that reviewers found evidence of discrimination as a contributing factor in roughly three-quarters of Black pregnancy-related deaths, and that Medicaid recipients died at nearly four times the rate of people with private insurance.

Kemeera Nimahat, a doula and founder of Mamma Jamma Dance and Maternal Wellness, told ABC7 that Roseland's closure compounds the loss of two local birth centers that shut down earlier, and that it falls hardest on Black mothers who already face elevated risk. She noted that home birth, often raised as an alternative, is not an option for patients with high-risk pregnancies. Dr. West has made a similar point, telling the station that "proximity to care matters" when a patient develops an urgent complication such as dangerously elevated blood pressure.

Nurses and officials press for more time

Workers represented by SEIU Healthcare Illinois held a vigil outside the hospital on October 12, the first organized public response to the closure. "We are asking for more time for the safety of our patients," said Arriann Henry, a labor and delivery nurse at Roseland, in comments reported by CBS News Chicago. Henry said most of the unit's patients are Black and Brown mothers.

The following day, Cook County Commissioner Dr. Kisha E. McCaskill joined union leaders in calling on the state to act, according to ABC7 Chicago's coverage of the push for state intervention.

"There is a crisis facing our safety net hospitals," McCaskill said. "Closing access to maternal health care without a plan is dangerous."

Anne Igoe, SEIU Healthcare Illinois' vice president of health systems, said responsibility ultimately rests with the state. "They need to make sure that that care is being provided and that it's available no matter what community," Igoe said, according to ABC7's report.

Wednesday's rally, described by organizers as a call to action for both the community and state leaders, drew hospital workers and supporters back to Roseland's campus just three days before the unit's final scheduled shift. As of Wednesday afternoon, ABC7 Chicago reported that state officials had not issued a public response to the demonstrators' demands, and hospital leaders said they were continuing to work on a transition plan to move expectant patients already in Roseland's care to other providers.

What happens next

Roseland says it will keep an outpatient obstetrics clinic running and has asked the state to help expand high-risk maternal care through Maryville Academy's New Moms' Home, according to an earlier NBC Chicago report on the hospital's plans. Under the terms of its notice to state regulators, Roseland must file progress reports on the funding gap every 30 days, and any suspension lasting beyond one year would require separate approval from the Health Facilities and Services Review Board. If the hospital ultimately decides the service cannot return, it would have to file a formal discontinuation application and go through a public comment process before labor and delivery could be permanently eliminated.

For now, the hospital's position is that the door remains open to restoring the unit if state reimbursement rates or additional funding make the math work. Nurses and advocates who rallied Wednesday say they intend to keep pressing Springfield to find that funding before the gap in care becomes permanent.