States Newsroom – Mike Tharp said he stopped counting years ago how many babies he’s delivered in ambulances in the more than two decades he’s been a paramedic in the Arkansas Delta.
Most of the time the deliveries aren’t complicated, said Tharp, who works for Pafford Medical Services in Phillips County. But then there are the ones that involve a breech birth or the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, raising the stakes for paramedics.
“You’re dealing with the life of a baby and a mother, and that stress level is extremely high,” Tharp said. “You can do everything in the world possible, and it still may not be good enough, and you have to live with that.”
Long distances between hospitals that deliver babies have only been getting longer in recent years due to closures, putting an extra strain on ambulance services that transport these patients.
Sometimes, they don’t make it in time and babies are born in ambulances, paramedics around the state say.
“Every time something closes a hospital or [another service] in health care, the ambulance is the safety net for that patient population, and the burden just grows and grows and grows on the ambulance service,” said Clay Hobbs, chief operating officer at Pafford, which is based in Hope and serves much of Arkansas and parts of other states.
Only 33 hospitals in 22 of Arkansas’ 75 counties have labor and delivery units.
Six maternity wards have closed since 2020, including the ones in Helena-West Helena, Warren and Crossett.
Pregnant patients in the Delta and South Arkansas have few options, and most of them involve at least half an hour and sometimes up to an hour and a half on the road …
