DELAWARE — Cathy Cramer has spent nearly her entire adult life connected to Grady Memorial Hospital.
She started working there at 17 years old. Over the next 49 years, she watched the hospital evolve while raising a family of her own.
Three of her children were born there. Then six grandchildren. Then two great-grandchildren.
On Thursday afternoon, the 75-year-old retiree sat in the shade outside Second Baptist Church in Delaware, hoping another generation of Delaware County families will have the same opportunity.
“I didn’t want them to get rid of the maternity ward,” Cramer said. “I think it’s unfair to Delaware.”
Cramer was among dozens of nurses, former hospital employees, patients, elected officials and community members who gathered for a rally opposing OhioHealth’s planned July 31 closure of Grady Memorial Hospital’s inpatient maternity unit.
Organized by the Ohio Nurses Association, the event called on OhioHealth to reverse its decision while urging Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson to review the health system’s obligations under Grady Memorial Hospital’s 2005 affiliation agreement.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton also attended the event and participated in a roundtable discussion with local nurses and community leaders before the rally.
According to Delaware City Council member Linsey Griffith, invitations were extended to candidates from both political parties as well as state and federal elected officials.
“This isn’t political,” Griffith said. “Women and infants — it’s personal.”
Photos by Brittany Schock. Story continues below.
Grady retirees speak out
Cramer said she understands Grady’s facilities may not be as new as some other OhioHealth hospitals, but she doesn’t believe that justifies eliminating maternity services.
“People say, ‘Well, it’s outdated,'” Kramer said. “Well, give Grady some money. Dublin didn’t do it for free.”
Former Grady nurse Trish Brown said she attended Thursday’s rally because she worries about what families will lose beyond labor and delivery.
Brown spent years caring for mothers and babies, including making postpartum home visits after patients left the hospital. She recalled checking newborns for jaundice, monitoring mothers for complications, removing staples after C-sections and catching problems before they became emergencies.
“The personal care at Grady — that is a one-on-one thing,” Brown said. “I would stay all night if I needed to.”
She worries that kind of continuity of care will become harder to achieve if expectant mothers are forced to deliver farther from home.
“I’m not happy about it. The community…they’re underserved,” Brown said. “What are people going to do? Hitch a ride to Riverside? It’s just not fair.”
Former Grady lactation educator Kathleen Terry echoed those concerns.
Tiro helped establish Grady’s outpatient lactation program and worked at multiple OhioHealth hospitals during her career, including Riverside Methodist Hospital and Dublin Methodist Hospital.
Despite that experience, she said Grady always felt different.
“You walk in the door, and they say hi to you,” Terry said. “I never got that elsewhere.”
Story continues below.
Calls to Ohio Attorney General
Before the public rally, organizers hosted a private roundtable discussion with Acton, Griffith, Ohio Nurses Association President Rick Lucas, nurses and community members to discuss the closure.
Griffith said participants discussed what they described as the gradual loss of maternal healthcare resources in this area.
Lucas, whose organization coordinated Thursday’s rally, said the fight extends beyond Delaware County.
“Today isn’t just about one maternity unit,” Lucas told the crowd. “Today is about whether healthcare belongs to our communities or greed-ridden boardrooms.”
OhioHealth said the termination of inpatient maternity services at Grady follows what it described as “a careful evaluation” of the program.
The health system has said pregnancy and postpartum care will remain available locally, but labor and delivery services will move to nearby OhioHealth hospitals.
Lucas said closing maternity care in one of Ohio’s fastest-growing counties doesn’t make sense.
“This isn’t common sense. This is corporate accounting, and unfettered greed,” he said.
“They buy community hospitals, they centralize services and they strip away resources. They call it efficiencies, but we call it what it is: abandonment.”
Lucas renewed the Ohio Nurses Association’s call for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether OhioHealth is complying with commitments it made when it assumed control of Grady Memorial Hospital in 2005.
“Promises made to the public are not optional,” Lucas said. “Commitments made to protect access to healthcare cannot be simply discarded when they become inconvenient.”
Discussions with OhioHealth
Thursday’s rally focused on public support for Grady’s maternity unit, but community leaders say work is also continuing behind the scenes.
Earlier this week, members of Delaware City Council met privately with OhioHealth representatives to discuss the planned closure. Griffith said OhioHealth and City Manager Paul Brake did not want the meetings open to the public.
“We pushed back quite a bit,” Griffith said of the meetings. “We asked a lot of questions.”
Council members pressed OhioHealth about what investments it had made in Grady’s maternity services over the past two decades, she said.
“When we asked them what investment they had made in maternity and labor and delivery, the only thing they could come up with was that they backfilled positions,” Griffith said.
Griffith said council also asked why OhioHealth was not honoring the 2005 affiliation agreement governing Grady Memorial Hospital.
“I don’t feel like they’ve been dealing with us honestly,” she said. “I don’t feel like they’ve been dealing with us in good faith.”
Despite her frustrations, Griffith said she remains hopeful the Attorney General’s Office will review the affiliation agreement and determine whether OhioHealth remains legally obligated to maintain maternity services at Grady.
“There’s always hope,” she said.
She said that if OhioHealth ultimately proceeds with the closure, she hopes another health system will recognize Delaware County’s rapid growth and demand for maternal healthcare services.
“We’re hoping another hospital system will see that we have an invested, caring, vibrant community here that is growing leaps and bounds.”
For Trish Brown, however, the issue comes back to something much simpler than contracts or politics.
“I get the financial thing,” she said. “It’s always about money, right? But it’s not all about money to me. It’s about the people.”
Photos by Jack Slemenda.
