In March 2025, we reported that Warren General Hospital was happy to open its doors to nearby expecting mothers affected by the closure of UPMC Cole’s labor and delivery unit.

At the time, we said in this space that the closure of the UPMC Cole labor and delivery center in Coudersport is part of a statewide trend of labor and delivery unit closures in rural counties across Pennsylvania. UPMC officials cited difficulties in recruiting an OB/GYN physician and a shortage of labor and delivery nurses as the primary reasons for the closure. UPMC Cole was the latest of 38 hospitals to have closed labor and delivery units over the past 20 years, according to an Erie Times-News report.

Make that 39 hospitals over the past 21 years with the news Monday that Warren General Hospital’s labor and delivery unit is falling victim to the same fate that befell UPMC Cole – difficulties recruiting an OB/GYN physician. We don’t fault Warren General Hospital. Health care officials throughout the state have been saying for years that rural areas in both Pennsylvania and across the country are having a hard time finding OB/GYN physicians. As rural populations fall it’s becoming harder and harder to get maternal health care to locate in those rural areas. Warren General Hospital used to deliver about 400 babies a year. That number is now about 175 babies. If the closure of UPMC Cole was the alarm going off on the maternity care crisis in rural hospitals in Pennsylvania, Warren General Hospital’s decision to close inpatient labor and delivery services is the alarm coming back on after the state hit the snooze button on the alarm clock.

In the course of a year, Warren General Hospital has gone from trying to help a neighboring health care facility’s patients to sending roughly 175 175 women who would have been having a baby delivered in Warren during the course of 2026 to either Erie or Jamestown.

This isn’t a problem that Warren General Hospital – or UPMC Cole or any other rural hospital, for that matter – can solve themselves. Operating margins for small, rural hospitals are razor thin in the best of times. That means a hospital like ours not only can’t offer a thriving area in which to have a practice, but typically can’t afford to offer financial incentives to entice doctors to come here. We said in this space last March that state officials needed to push for solutions for rural areas that find themselves without a labor and delivery unit that is accessible for expectant mothers. The time to push has become the time to shove.