UAB Hospital’s 400,000-square-foot Women and Infants Center, scheduled to open in 2010, is designed to offer a comfortable, family-friendly atmosphere and an expert medical staff in a state-of-the-art facility.

“Our labor and delivery service will marry the physical comfort, ease of use, and family celebratory atmosphere often associated with giving birth in a community hospital with access to the highest level of obstetrical and neonatalogy resources for mothers and babies,” says the center’s Director of Development Roberta Shapiro, MPH, MBA.

Patients will enter the ground floor of the facility under a covered vestibule with convenient valet or on-site short-term parking. This floor features an emergency delivery and newborn-care room that will handle births in progress for which there is insufficient transport time to reach the third-floor labor and delivery area.

“The labor, delivery, and recovery rooms offer a homelike birthing experience,” Shapiro says.

The facility is one of the first hospitals in the Southeast with all-private neonatal intensive care nursery and continuing care nursery rooms. It also offers private labor, antepartum, postpartum, and gynecology patient rooms. The private-room design should result in improved patient progression, increased patient and staff satisfaction, enhanced maternal-infant bonding, and decreased infection rates.

“Rooms for mothers and neonatal ICU rooms — including specialized isolation rooms and rooms designed for twins and triplets — all are designed to further enhance the family atmosphere,” she says.

Gains in Survival, Morbidity
“Incredible advances in medical knowledge and technological development have resulted in an astonishing improvement in survival and decreases in morbidity for pregnant women and their newborns. This is particularly true for mothers and babies at high risk for adverse outcomes,” says Division of Fetal and Maternal Medicine Director William W. Andrews, PhD, MD.

“Our existing facilities, housed in buildings that were constructed 70 to 80 years ago, cannot continue to provide the sophisticated support required for state-of-the-art maternal-fetal medicine and neonatal care,” Dr. Andrews says. “This new facility will position us to accommodate evolving, cutting-edge approaches to obstetrical and neonatal care for the women of Alabama.”

The labor and delivery area includes sleeping quarters for a parent or support person, 4 caesarean section operating rooms, 13 maternity evaluation rooms, 17 labor, delivery, and recovery rooms, a 5-room postanesthesia recovery suite, and infant resuscitation stations.

“We want people to make the Women and Infants Center the first choice for their obstetrical care. We have some of the best neonatologists and obstetricians in the world available 24 hours a day to care for pregnant women and newborns,” Shapiro says.

Follow this link to read more about the new Women and Infants Center and to view pictures.

To learn more about the UAB Regional Newborn (Neonatal) Intensive Care Unit, visit uabhealth.org/nicu.

UAB Synopsis, Vol. 28, No. 13, April 6, 2009