DELAWARE — When Monica DeTota saw that Delaware City Council planned to discuss OhioHealth’s decision to close the maternity unit at Grady Memorial Hospital on Monday, she grabbed her 16-month-old son Nicholas and drove to city hall.
She hadn’t planned to speak.
But as DeTota sat in council chambers Monday night holding the toddler she delivered at Grady Memorial, she said she felt compelled to tell her story.
DeTota told council she intended to deliver at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, a 30-minute drive from her home in Delaware. She arrived believing she was in labor. Instead, she said, she was told she was not.
“I did everything right,” DeTota said. “I was tracking my contractions. It was my second child. I knew what was happening in my body.”
After leaving Riverside, DeTota said she ultimately called Delaware EMS to her home.
Ninety minutes later, Nicholas was born at Grady.
“I feared that I would either have my baby upstairs at home, or in the back of that EMS vehicle,” DeTota told council. “If Grady had not been there, where would Nicholas have been born?”
Her testimony became one of the most emotional moments of a meeting dominated by mothers, healthcare workers and community members urging Delaware City Council to oppose OhioHealth’s planned closure of Grady Memorial Hospital’s maternity unit on July 31.
By the end of the night, council unanimously approved an emergency resolution asking OhioHealth to halt the closure and calling on the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to enforce a 2005 affiliation agreement that identifies obstetrics as a core service at Grady Memorial Hospital.
Delaware City Council member and certified professional midwife Linsey Griffith, author of the resolution, told Delaware Source earlier on Monday that obstetric emergencies at Grady have historically triggered what hospital staff refer to as a “Code Pink” — a call that brings labor and delivery personnel to respond.
Monday’s meeting featured a different kind of Code Pink: residents, nurses and elected officials sounding an alarm over the future of maternity care in Delaware County.
Attorney General asked to review affiliation agreement
Council approved Resolution 26-49 unanimously after hearing testimony from nearly a dozen speakers, including maternity nurses, former patients and healthcare advocates.
The resolution expresses concern about the closure’s potential impact on maternal and infant health, emergency response capacity, healthcare workforce stability and access to care throughout Delaware County and surrounding communities.
It also calls on the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to enforce a 2005 affiliation agreement signed when Grady Memorial became part of OhioHealth. The agreement identifies obstetrics as one of the hospital’s core services.
A central issue throughout Monday’s meeting was whether OhioHealth’s decision is consistent with that agreement — particularly after other services, including coronary care, oncology and radiology, have already been reduced or eliminated at Grady, according to Griffith.
“I think the writing is on the wall,” Griffith said during Monday’s meeting. “And I think if we don’t take a stand now, there will not be a Grady to stand for in two years.”
Griffith said she became frustrated after learning city leadership had not scheduled meetings with regional stakeholders regarding the closure and had chosen to address the issue outside a public forum. Those concerns prompted her to introduce the resolution.
She argued that while city council lacks the authority to stop the closure, elected officials have a responsibility to raise concerns about whether OhioHealth is complying with its obligations under the agreement.
“We, as elected officials, have the obligation to our residents to stand up for our residents. But we don’t have the legal standing to enforce this agreement,” she said.
“We can ask the Attorney General to enforce the affiliation agreement. And that’s the only recourse we have.”
OhioHealth cites legal authority to close unit
Delaware Source asked OhioHealth whether the planned closure complies with the 2005 affiliation agreement, how the health system interprets the term “obstetrics” as it appears in the contract, whether the agreement has been amended since 2005 and whether OhioHealth has discussed the matter with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
OhioHealth provided the following statement:
“We are always going to do what is right for the safety of our patients. OhioHealth has the legal authority to close the inpatient maternity unit at Grady. We brought the issue to the board, and the board approved the action.”
OhioHealth previously announced the maternity unit will close July 31.
In its announcement, the health system cited declining obstetric volumes and said fewer than 10 percent of babies born within the OhioHealth system to Delaware County families were delivered at Grady during the last fiscal year.
OhioHealth has said many families already choose other affiliates like Dublin Methodist Hospital and Riverside Methodist Hospital because those facilities provide 24-hour obstetric coverage and higher levels of newborn care.
‘This is a public safety issue’
However, speakers at Monday night’s council meeting urged the powers that be to view the issue as more than a hospital staffing or financial decision.
Bethany Castle, an OB technician at Grady who said she has worked five years at the hospital and eight years within the OhioHealth system, noted the decision would have consequences far beyond the hospital’s labor and delivery unit.
“This is not about the loss of a hospital department,” Castle said. “This is about the loss of timely emergency care for mothers and babies. It is about the loss of safe local access to childbirth.”
Wearing a headband patterned with the same pink-and-blue stripes commonly seen on newborn hospital caps, Castle argued that maternity care should be viewed as critical infrastructure in a rapidly growing county.
“Babies do not wait. Hemorrhages do not wait. Cord prolapses do not wait,” she said. “When an obstetric emergency happens, minutes matter.”
While Castle spoke about the human impact of the closure, health professional Kim Swisher focused on what she called the realities of obstetric medicine.
“I could talk about how I became a mom at Grady, and I was born at Grady,” Swisher said. “But I want to talk about some facts.”
Swisher argued that labor and delivery nurses possess training that differs from traditional emergency medicine, particularly when caring for mothers and newborns during a crisis.
“Pregnancy and neonatal care is a specialty,” she said. “For a patient actively hemorrhaging, there is no one in the ER trained or certified to interpret electronic fetal monitoring to assess fetal wellbeing.
“When a patient wakes up in the middle of the night bleeding heavily, they don’t have time to drive 35 to 40 minutes or greater to seek care.”
The testimony stretched long enough that even the pastor who opened the meeting returned to the podium.
The Rev. Michael Curtis of Second Baptist Church said he had not planned to speak, but felt compelled after listening to the concerns raised by nurses, mothers and healthcare workers throughout the evening.
“Pro-life is not just abortions, pro-life is everything that deals with life,” Curtis told council. “If you base life on how much you’re going to get out of it, then we’ve lost the reality of real life.”
Curtis questioned whether a rapidly growing community should be losing access to maternity services and emergency care.
“I would not want to move in a place where I can’t take care of my children,” he said.
What happens next?
The resolution directs the city clerk to send copies to OhioHealth leadership, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, Delaware County commissioners, public health officials and members of the Ohio General Assembly who represent the region.
A central question raised during Monday’s meeting was whether the Ohio Attorney General’s Office has any role in enforcing the 2005 affiliation agreement.
Delaware Source contacted the Attorney General’s Office seeking clarification about its authority, including whether it has oversight responsibilities related to the agreement, whether it has received complaints regarding the planned closure and whether it has any role in reviewing compliance with the contract.
The Attorney General’s Office did not respond before publication.
While council’s resolution carries no legal force, members said they hope it will prompt additional scrutiny before the maternity unit’s planned closure on July 31.
