According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population in New Braunfels increased by 66% from 2012 to 2022.
“We have to expand our women’s program; we’ve really made a business case to do that,” Resolute Baptist Hospital CEO Mark Bernard said. “Right now, the way we’re set up, we’re just going to run out of space looking at the projected growth.”
Local hospitals have worked to bring more specialists into New Braunfels and expand their capabilities in patient care.
Local physicians anticipate the upward trend of increased demand in health care to continue, according to Dr. Erin Wright, medical director of InnovaCare Health and hospitalist for Christus Health and Resolute Baptist.
“It’s going to be the constant forward motion, staying ahead of what the needs of this community are and making sure that we’re continuing to meet them,” Wright said.
Expanded capabilities
Resolute Baptist Hospital has a Level II neonatal intensive care unit and provides care for babies born at 32 weeks gestation or older.
Bernard said Resolute Baptist is in the process of expanding its services and has future ambitions to become a Level III NICU. A Level III NICU would allow the hospital to provide critical care for babies born before 32 weeks or that require specialized pediatric care or surgery.
The nearest Level III NICUs are located in San Antonio at Christus Children’s and North Central Baptist.
Resolute Baptist is also expanding its women’s services department to offer 15 postpartum beds for mothers to utilize after childbirth, have five antepartum rooms for expecting mothers and expand to 17 labor rooms.
“Our community is growing, and we just feel it’s time to grow with it,” said Kelli Culp, clinical manager of the NICU at Resolute Baptist. “And we’ve had a lot more [severe conditions], younger kiddos coming through our doors, more emergencies coming through our doors, so we are ready to have them and accept them.”
Culp said Resolute Baptist went from around 40 deliveries a month to consistently delivering more than 100 babies a month since August 2022.
Amber Rodriguez, a resident of New Braunfels and mother to a set of triplets born at Resolute Baptist last year, said she enjoyed the level of care she received.
“I’m happy they’re expanding,” Rodriguez said. “We found almost every single nurse we encountered to be genuinely caring and compassionate, ... and I feel confident that they’ll continue that culture as they grow.”
Investing in motherhood
Resolute Baptist added a laborist program to its Nest Women’s Services department in March, allowing the hospital to have an in-house obstetrician 24 hours a day.
Dr. Kevin Blair, who has been an OB-GYN in New Braunfels for 27 years, is the department chair at Christus Santa-Rosa New Braunfels for the Women and Children’s Department, director of women’s care at Christus and is involved with the laborist program at Resolute Baptist.
Both local hospitals offer robotic-assisted gynecological surgery, and Christus Santa-Rosa New Braunfels recently acquired an MRI-guided breast biopsy procedure. Both robotic-assisted devices help to provide a less invasive procedure for patients and quicker recovery time.
“It’s kind of revolutionized surgery, not just for us, but for all aspects,” Blair said. “My hysterectomies now [are] essentially outpatient.”
Blair said the Center for Maternal and Fetal Care opened a location in New Braunfels within the past year. In an attempt to bring more specialists into New Braunfels, some of the recent additions to women’s care from Christus include Dr. Jillian Grimm, a colon and rectal surgeon, and Dr. Rachel Kaczynski, a breast surgeon with Texas Oncology.
Genifer Rucker, CEO of the Christus Santa Rosa hospital in New Braunfels, has made it a priority to renovate the Women’s Services Department at the hospital, invest in new technology and offer new OB-GYN services. Her plans to modernize the department are anticipated to begin this summer.
“We actually have very up-to-date technology, and we want the look and feel of the unit to match all of the advanced technology that we’ve already invested in,” Rucker said.
This past year, Christus Santa Rosa updated its NICU with new equipment, including monitoring systems, IV-supported technology, incubators and cribs.
Christus Santa Rosa also has a unique program called Every Baby Matters, which is funded through the McKenna Foundation, the United Way and the hospital’s Friends Foundation. Part of the program includes a nurse providing a home visit to mothers in the time period after giving birth but before their first obstetrics follow-up. The nurse is able to check the overall health of the mother and baby, including for signs of hypertension and postpartum depression.
“With the rise in maternal hypertension rates and other kinds of complications, it’s important that we have this medical entity that has so much value,” said Victoria Glynn, a Christus Santa Rosa labor and delivery nurse.
An evolving community
Christus Santa Rosa has been accredited as a baby-friendly hospital due to its initiative to promote breastfeeding and has Lactation Lead Shawna Baker, a full-time nationally certified lactation consultant.
The staff at Christus Santa Rosa also works to support low-intervention births and is in the process of adding certified nurse midwives. Due to an increased trend in women looking toward home births during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital staff said they believe it would be beneficial to offer natural births guided by midwives with nursing certifications in a clinical setting to ensure the safest possible delivery.
“We currently have a certified nurse midwife with our Christus Trinity clinic,” Rucker said. “And we are working on a relationship with another clinic that we’ll be able to bring in a full-service midwife clinic to add five more certified nurse midwives.”
According to Anna Akin, clinical director of the Labor and Delivery Department at Christus Santa Rosa, half of the maternal deaths in Texas last year occurred in postpartum.
“Typically, you see a doctor 13 times in a row before you have a baby and then one time after,” Akin said.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the maternal mortality rate increased throughout the country in recent years. In 2021, 32.9 deaths were recorded per 100,000 live births, compared to 23.8 in 2020.
Future outlook
Bernard said Resolute Baptist officials are looking forward to expanding the capabilities of its women’s services department.
“We’re really trying to do two things: trying to create access and of course, provide a great experience because health care is pretty much a repeat business, right?” Bernard said. “When people have a baby, chances are that if it’s a great experience they are coming back.”
Culp said that Resolute Baptist is looking forward to expanding to welcome more patients.
“We’re so thankful to get to expand and welcome more moms and babies. ... The difference for us is we have a lot of one-on-one care that we can provide,” Culp said. “We still keep that really close bond with mom, baby and nurse.”
