Roseland Community Hospital plans to suspend its labor and delivery services at the end of this month – the latest South Side hospital to pull back on obstetric care.
Leaders of the Far South Side hospital did not make the decision to suspend the services “by choice,” hospital President and CEO Tim Egan said in a statement Friday.
“It is the result of decades of historical underfunding of safety-net hospitals that have made it impossible to sustain services that this community depends on and deserves,” Egan said.
“This closure will be felt far beyond our neighborhood,” Egan said. “Women in this community will now have to travel farther and wait longer for obstetric care and in labor and delivery, distance and delay cost lives.”
Roseland had 17 obstetric/gynecology beds and 107 births in 2025, according to a Health Facilities and Services Review Board report.
Roseland, like many Chicago safety-net hospitals, has faced financial challenges for years. Earlier this year, the hospital struggled to make payroll after it didn’t receive its Medicaid managed care organization payments as early as usual.
Safety-net hospitals treat large numbers of people on Medicaid, a state and federally-funded health insurance program for people with low incomes and disabilities. Medicaid typically pays hospitals less for care than private policies, and those payments don’t cover the full cost of care, hospital leaders say.
In 2025, about 51% of Roseland’s inpatient revenue came from Medicaid. Safety-net hospitals also often struggle with aging facilities and, like other hospitals, face rising costs for supplies, medication and staffing.
The closure of obstetric units on the city’s South Side has been particularly troubling to many, given disparities in maternal health outcomes between Black and white women.
Since 2019, at least three other South Side hospitals have also closed their obstetric units, including Jackson Park Hospital and Medical Center, St. Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center and Insight Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago (formerly called Mercy Hospital).
In Illinois, Black women were three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related medical conditions as white women between 2018 and 2020, according to a state health department report on maternal morbidity and mortality. The rate at which Black women suffered severe pregnancy or delivery complications was more than two times that of white women.
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In 2025, about 89% of Roseland’s patients were Black.
“Maternal mortality rates here are already too high,” Egan said in the statement. “This will make them worse.”
Michelle Adeniyi, director of Maternal Child Health Collective Impact at March of Dimes in Chicago, called the suspension of services at Roseland “really unfortunate.”It will further strain individuals who may already be dealing with challenges related to transportation, finding fresh groceries and housing insecurity, she said.
“Illinois already had substantial maternity care access gaps, especially on the South Side,” Adeniyi said. “We know that there will be greater travel issues and limited access that will increase the risk for moms and babies.”
The change at Roseland is part of a larger trend of community hospitals across the state cutting obstetrics, often citing low numbers of patients caused by shifting demographics and more patients choosing to deliver at hospitals with major birthing centers.
Last month, Prime Healthcare announced plans to suspend obstetric care at three of its Illinois hospitals — St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Mercy Medical Center in Aurora and Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago. Prime said it would centralize labor and delivery services at two of its other hospitals and invest in maternal health in the community. The move drew criticism from the Illinois Nurses Association union, which worried about the community losing the service.