Ohio Valley General Hospital will stop delivering babies by year's end.

The Kennedy Township facility, which has offered maternity services since it opened in 1906, has been delivering about 300 babies a year over the past five years, "and the number's going down," said President and CEO William Provenzano.

He attributed the decrease to a lower birth rate locally and more families being referred to other centers, such as St. Clair Hospital or Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC. In the past decade, UPMC Passavant and UPMC McKeesport have shifted their maternity services to Magee.

Ohio Valley opened a maternity center in 2006 in a bid to increase annual births to at least 800, but the baby bump never materialized.

"It's difficult for us to maintain a viable operation for a lot of reasons," Mr. Provenzano said. It's partly financial but there's also the difficulty of ensuring that the staff maintained an adequate level of proficiency. By averaging less than one birth daily, he noted, "With three shifts, if you worked the wrong shift, you could go months without delivering a baby."

Mr. Provenzano said a specific date has not been set for closing the maternity unit, as physicians make arrangements for patients to deliver at other hospitals and, if necessary, gain admitting privileges there. Ohio Valley will continue to offer obstetrical prenatal care.

The hospital laid off fewer than 10 staff last week, said spokesman Casey Goodman, with the obstetrical nursing staff among those affected. The maternity unit had about 20 nurses, Mr. Goodman said, most of whom will be reassigned.

Mr. Provenzano said Ohio Valley has hired a consultant to help the hospital decide what to do with the space that will be freed up by the change.

"We're looking at expanding our existing services and perhaps adding new services," he said, and he expects staff numbers will ultimately grow.

Still, he acknowledged, the decision to close the maternity unit "was very emotional for all of us. We tried. We spent millions of dollars trying to build it up and make it grow, but it's very difficult."

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