DELAWARE — By August, families in Delaware County will no longer have a hospital delivery room.
The county’s only hospital-based labor and delivery unit is scheduled to close July 31, when OhioHealth discontinues inpatient maternity services at Grady Memorial Hospital, 561 W. Central Ave.
Families planning a hospital birth will now have to leave Delaware County for delivery care, even as prenatal, postnatal and gynecologic services remain available at OhioHealth offices in Delaware, Lewis Center and Jerome.
“Decisions like this carry real weight, and we don’t take them lightly,” said Cherie Smith, PhD, MBA, RN for OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital and OhioHealth Dublin Methodist.
“Our priority is making sure every mother and newborn has access to the level of care they deserve, including around-the-clock obstetric support and advanced newborn resources that most community hospitals are not equipped to provide.”
During the last fiscal year, fewer than 10% of babies born in an OhioHealth hospital to families living in Delaware County were delivered at Grady Memorial. In 2025, the hospital delivered approximately 265 babies.
Grady Memorial will continue to provide gynecological procedures such as hysterectomies or endometrial ablations.
The hospital’s emergency department teams are also fully equipped, trained and prepared to safely support and deliver babies for any patient who arrives in labor or requires an emergency delivery.
Closure reflects nationwide trends
Across the country, less babies are being delivered in rural and suburban hospitals.
A 2024 March of Dimes report found that 52% of U.S. counties did not have a hospital with an obstetric unit in 2022, despite hospitals accounting for nearly 98% of births. In 2021 and 2022 alone, at least 107 obstetric units closed nationwide.
In nearby counties, OhioHealth Shelby Hospital in Richland County discontinued its maternity services in February 2023. That same year, University Hospitals Samaritan Medical Center in Ashland County cut its maternity services in August.
“Hospitals across the country are experiencing a trend of declining birth rates. This, along with staffing shortages, have resulted in having to make this difficult decision,” UH Samaritan’s chief operating officer Sylvia Radziszewski said at the time.
Higher operating costs compound the problem.
In March, the American Hospital Association reported that in 2025, total hospital expenses grew 7.5% — more than twice the rate of growth in hospital prices over the same period.
Yet despite national fertility rates declining, Delaware’s population has only grown.
According to the Delaware County Regional Planning Commission, the county’s population in 2025 was more than 250,000 people. By comparison, in the year 2000, the population was a little over 109,000 people.
The DCRPC projects that by 2040, Delaware County’s population will be over 312,000 people.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 2,476 women in Delaware County aged 15 to 50 years old gave birth in the year 2024. The state of Ohio reported 2,269 births in Delaware County in 2025.
Longer travel times increase risk
OhioHealth’s announcement prompted reaction from the Ohio Nurses Association (ONA), the state’s professional union for nurses and health professionals.
Rick Lucas, RN, president of the ONA, called the move “short-sighted and dangerous.”
“It highlights the structural rot at the core of Ohio’s corporate-owned, profit-driven healthcare system,” Lucas said in a statement on June 11, one day after the closure announcement.
“Delaware County is the fastest-growing county in Ohio. Families who live there will now have to travel 30 minutes or longer to reach inpatient maternity care,” he said.
“And those minutes will cost lives.”
According to OhioHealth, Delaware County residents routinely give birth at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital and OhioHealth Marion General Hospital.
Of those, Marion General is the closest hospital to Grady Memorial, a 31-minute drive between the two. Dublin Methodist is a 34-minute drive from Grady Memorial, and Riverside Methodist is 39 minutes away.
Outside of the OhioHealth sytem, Mount Carmel St. Ann’s is 31 minutes away from Grady Memorial, and Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is about 38 minutes away.
Nationally, birthing patients travel an average of 15.9 minutes by car to the nearest birthing hospital, according to the March of Dimes report. That average rises to 26.2 minutes in rural areas and 38 minutes for people living in what they classify as “maternity care deserts.”
Longer travel times during pregnancy and childbirth are associated with higher risks for mothers and babies, including maternal morbidity, stillbirth, NICU admission and unexpected out-of-hospital births. The report also notes that longer distances can add financial strain, stress and anxiety for families trying to reach care.
“Families in Delaware County deserve access to local maternity care,” Lucas said. “Expectant mothers shouldn’t have to travel farther because executives decided the numbers no longer work.”
Backlash from local health professionals
An online petition to keep Grady’s maternity and labor unit open reached more than 3,200 signatures as of June 17.
The Ohio Nurses Association cited the state’s most recent report of pregnancy-related deaths in the state, saying 88% of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable.
“Inpatient maternity care is critical to lowering this devastating number,” Lucas said.
“OhioHealth’s announcement isn’t the end of inpatient maternity services at Grady, it’s the beginning of a demand from Delaware County families, nurses and health professionals that OhioHealth provide necessary, lifesaving healthcare services to Ohioans where they live.”
Delaware City Council representative Linsey Griffith, a certified professional midwife and certified lactation counselor, said in a Facebook post the decision was not in the best interest of women living in Delaware, southern Marion or Morrow counties.
“It makes birth more dangerous for an entire county, a county that was already inadequately served. A county that is the richest and one of the fastest growing in the state,” Griffith said.
She added the move would adversely affect medical professionals in Delaware County, as they will be forced to seek employment outside of the county.
“This decision will harm infants in the tri-county region,” she said.
“This decision will adversely affect our most vulnerable citizens the worst, placing financial and logistical strain on families already struggling. Women will die. Babies will die.”
