Mon General Hospital will be filing a Certificate of Need (CON) application with the West Virginia Health Care Authority, according to a news release from Monongalia Health System.
The Hospital is filing the application to seek approval of plans to renovate and expand the hospital's Hazel Ruby McQuain Family Birth Center, officials said.
The project will expand the labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum (LDRP) concept to all 16 of its licensed obstetric beds, according to the application.
This will relocate the nursing station to improve the security and safety of the unit and add a C-section delivery room within the Birth Center, officials said.
According to the news release, a woman having a routine labor and delivery remains in the same room throughout her stay along with her newborn under the LDRP concept.
Mon General's President and CEO Darryl Duncan said that the purposed renovation and expansion project will address the significant growth in newborn deliveries the hospital has experienced in recent years.
"Over the last six years, we have experienced 78 percent growth in newborn deliveries at Mon General and we are expecting that to increase an additional 45 percent in the next three years," Duncan said.
The existing Birth Center was opened in 199 and funded in part by a major grant from the Hazel Ruby McQuain Foundation, officials said.
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