Q&A with Erica Arthur of Memorial Hospital & Health Care Center
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Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center in Jasper is one of U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care. The facility, which will be renamed Deaconess Memorial Medical Center this summer, was one of 10 hospitals in Indiana to receive a “High Performing” designation.
U.S. News & World Report’s list is based on several maternity care measures including C-section delivery rates, severe unexpected newborn complication rates and reporting on racial/ethnic disparities. Erica Arthur, director of women and infant services at MHHCC, spoke with Inside INdiana Business about the distinction.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about the women and infant services at Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center.
We would be considered a smaller delivery facility compared to The [Deaconess] Women’s Hospital. We do about 800 deliveries a year. We are a Level II, Special Care Nursery. We have an excellent staff of nurses, obstetricians, pediatricians and family doctors.
A Level II nursery means we can take [patients who are] 32 weeks [pregnant] and above. We are working to expand those services in special care as we speak. To have an all-around holistic approach to keeping those kiddos in our community if they’re born a little early and need extra support.
What makes maternity care at MHHCC unique compared to other facilities?
A collaborative teamwork environment because we’re not big. We know all of our providers, and they know us not only on a professional level but also on a personal level. It makes that teamwork to care for those patients that much better. Also, because we are located where we are, most of the time, somebody in the room knows that patient in some capacity. There’s a sense of family and community here.
The other piece that makes us unique is our OBs and family medicine doctors deliver [babies for] the patients they care for during their prenatal care. That’s different than most setups pretty much anywhere. They take special pride in having that relationship with their patients throughout their pregnancy, and they are not happy if they don’t get to be there for them during delivery if they happen to be out of town or something.
What challenges do you face in maternity care at MHHCC?
The challenges are not restricted necessarily to Memorial. Nationwide, we see staffing challenges for nursing, pretty much anything in health care. I’m lucky right now. I seem to be staffed appropriately. The challenges come when we have a high patient census that spontaneously happens that we can’t plan for. Then we run into some staffing challenges and being able to provide the care that we want and expect of ourselves.
Sometimes it’s challenging for patients to know about us and to understand the high-quality care that we provide. We get put into a box. “They’re a small rural hospital. I’m going to go somewhere else to get different care.” Patients don’t realize they can get awesome care close to home.
What’s your vision for maternity care at MHHCC?
I see more of maternity care moving into an outpatient setting as it does with health care in general. Trying to keep moms with their families as much as possible before they get pregnant, expanding that technology to make that an option is going to be something that we’ll see in the next five to 10 years.
The other thing is with the creation of OB deserts—not necessarily right here but not that far away either—we’re going to have to go to some of those underserved areas versus them coming to us to try to compensate for the lack of accessibility. Rethinking how we approach accessibility for patients.
What advice do you have for people wanting to pursue maternity health services as a career?
When you’re in school, dig in, learn all you can and try to get some type of exposure. Real life, not just in school. Whether that’s shadowing for a few days or potentially seeking out job opportunities in whatever capacity to understand the true breadth of what it takes to be an OB nurse in their area.
Our OB nurses are not just labor and delivery. They’re postpartum, [gynecology], baby care, special care baby, sometimes lactation. They are well-diversified across the spectrum of maternal and neonatal nursing. So trying to get that exposure and understand that it is not rocking babies all day in the nursery.
How does it feel to be named one of 2025 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care by U.S. News & World Report?
It’s amazing. It feels awesome to have that recognition of all the hard work that my staff put into everything that they do. It’s very important in this day and age where there’s so much negativity out there to be seen as a positive place to work and provide care. It warms my heart.
It makes them feel so good about themselves. I feel honored to be a leader for them. They’re a great team, and they’re very special. For them, it is about getting that recognition that what we do is hard, but we rise to the occasion. And we make it an excellent experience and provide great outcomes.
MHHCC also made the publication’s Maternity Care Access Hospitals list. What is that?
It’s being in a community that depends on our access to provide basic maternity care services. We are preventing a desert in our area.
What do these distinctions mean for expectant parents in southwest Indiana?
I hope it makes them feel secure. That if they come to Memorial, they’re going to get the best care they possibly can, and that our care is equivalent to what they would receive in a larger facility. We don’t have the specialists; we’re not meant to have those. But we have access to them.
We have a great referral process and great relationships with the larger facilities. If we need an extra hand, our providers have them on speed dial, and they can do some quick phone conversations to review care, but most of the time that’s not needed. We know what we’re doing. We’ve had a ton of training.
We have relationships with [the bigger hospitals]. They help us with things that we are not as familiar with, and they help us get comfortable with them. It’s a disservice to us to assume that because we’re small, we are not up to date on all of the standards. We are probably ahead of a lot of places, even larger facilities, on standards in our industry.