Olney Moms Have Close Calls After OHH Shutters Obstetrics

Less than six months after obstetrics services ended at Olney Hamilton Hospital, two Olney women experienced harrowing deliveries that nearly occurred on the side of the road — including one baby born inside an ambulance parked across the street from the hospital.

Both mothers and infants are healthy, according to Dr. Chantel Taylor, who provides prenatal care in Olney but must now travel to Faith Community Hospital in Jacksboro to attend their births since the OHH board shut down obstetrics last June. The families asked to remain anonymous to protect their privacy.

In December, one woman’s labor progressed so quickly that an ambulance transporting her to Jacksboro never even left the Olney city limits. The woman told the Enterprise that she had been told that she would have to drive an hour to give birth. “I knew I probably wouldn’t make it,” she said. Consulting by phone from Jacksboro, Dr. Taylor instructed the EMS crew to drive straight from her home in Olney to the hospital’s emergency room when it became clear the patient would not make the drive.

“She was crowning,” Dr. Taylor said. “They realized they weren’t going anywhere.”

The baby was delivered inside the ambulance without complication but the newborn baby boy required resuscitation, Dr. Taylor said. ER staff took over care of the mother and baby, and delivered the placenta within the recommended 30 minutes after the birth, Dr. Taylor said.

The delivery occurred during a shift change at the hospital, meaning both overnight and daytime staff were on site — a circumstance Dr. Taylor said made a critical difference. By chance, a traveling pediatrician, Dr. Emmekin Godelieve Otte, and Dr. Charles Hudson, a family medicine physician with obstetrics experience, were also present.

Had the delivery happened in the middle of the night, staffing may not have been sufficient to care for both mother and infant, she said.

That close call was foreshadowed in November, when another Olney woman went into precipitous labor, and she and her husband raced to Faith Community Hospital, traveling at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour to arrive just minutes before her baby was born.

“She pushed twice and we had a baby in two minutes,” Dr. Taylor said. “Had she hit a deer, gotten a flat tire, or I had been pulled over, she would not have made it.”

Dr. Taylor said she prepared her pregnant patients for such emergencies after the hospital board voted in June of 2024 to end obstetrics services the following June, citing cost concerns and state regulations.

The board previously announced that obstetrics would not be offered at the new $33 million hospital now under construction on West Hamilton Street because Texas regulations require new hospitals to have two operating rooms to deliver babies. Olney Hamilton Hospital, the state’s oldest continuously operating rural hospital, was the only hospital in Young County still delivering babies since Graham cut the service in 2015.

Dr. Taylor said she met with Olney EMS crews last May, before obstetrics shut down, to train them on managing “precipitous deliveries,” defined as births occurring within three hours of labor onset. Her final instruction, she said, was simple: “When in doubt, call me.”

In the November case, nurses at Olney Hamilton Hospital contacted law enforcement dispatchers in multiple counties to alert agencies that the parents and Dr. Taylor would be speeding to Jacksboro for a precipitous birth.

Dr. Taylor said the dangers extend beyond the risk of roadside births. Ambulance transport to Jacksboro is costly, and patients traveling independently face the risk of high-speed travel on rural highways.

Dr. Jeremy Johnson, a hospital board member who previously delivered babies in Olney, Graham and Jacksboro, and Dr. Taylor warned board members before the obstetrics program was cut that requiring women to travel nearly an hour to give birth would put mothers and babies at risk.

Dr. Taylor and Dr. Johnson also warned at that 2024 meeting that women would continue to arrive at Olney’s emergency room with preterm labor, late-term miscarriages, and other life-threatening complications — without the staff or equipment needed to respond.

“In an emergency, every ER provider should feel competent delivering a placenta or resuscitating an infant,” Dr. Taylor said. “However, when it may have been years since you’ve had to practice that skill, that can be a daunting task.” She added that OHH’s decision to cut obstetrics means she is often in Jacksboro for 24 hours on average, managing laboring patients. “I can’t help except by picking up the phone,” she said.

Dr. Taylor said despite attempts by medical and emergency staff to prepare Olney families, outcomes are uncertain.

“When we transitioned care to Jacksboro, we had plans for every scenario,” she said. “But all the plans went up in smoke, like the best-laid ones typically do. ”