South DeKalb women will no longer have the option of delivering their babies close to home at De­Kalb Medical at Hillandale.

Effective April 17, DeKalb Medical is eliminating Hillandale’s maternity and special care nursery services. Women will now have to go to its North Decatur Road hospital for deliveries.

Cheryl Iverson, DeKalb Medical’s vice president of business development and marketing, said Thursday that cutting maternity service from the 100-bed hospital is part of the hospital’s efforts to refocus services on the community’s health disparity needs and preferences.

“We would love to offer all these things but we have got to manage resources to the community as a whole,” she said. “We intended to offer the services at Hillandale but the volume just wasn’t there.”

Instead, Iverson said the system will focus on strokes, cancer and heart disease at Hillandale.

News of the impending loss of the maternity and neonatal services saddened many South DeKalb residents.

Juanita Baranco, whose grandson Thomas was born at Hillandale three years ago, said her family has always had phenomenal service at the Lithonia hospital.

“I really, really hate to see that go,” she said. “All hospitals have to have a certain number of paying patients. That’s one of the things that has hurt them.”

The $65 million hospital, which opened on July 18, 2005, is just four months shy of its fourth anniversary.

Since opening, it has struggled to attract paying patients who often leapfrogged over it to larger metro Atlanta hospitals, and to DeKalb Medical’s own state-of-the-art Women’s Center that opened in January 2007.

The net effect is that the Hillandale hospital – which opened after a 35-year fight to build it – was often left with a disproportionate number of uninsured and non-paying patients.

Maternity and neonatal intensive services were linchpin services that helped DeKalb Medical win state approval for the Hillandale hospital over rival Tenet Health System in February 2002. Tenet had wanted to build a hospital on Mall Parkway overlooking the Mall at Stonecrest.

Iverson said they spoke with the state about their decision to eliminate maternity service and there are no penalties to face.

She said the decision could not be helped because Hillandale never got the volume of deliveries that it expected.

“We didn’t hit the projections in terms of volume,” she said. “Women chose the Women’s Center two-to-one over Hillandale. The volume of deliveries that we expected just never materalized.”

DeKalb Medical’s feasibility study for Hillandale had projected 2,300 deliveries a year. Iverson said that in 2008, it had 1,225 deliveries. Another 2,000 women from the nine Lithonia, Stone Mountain and Decatur Zip codes served by the hospital, went to the North Decatur campus to deliver their babies.

Baranco, who supported De­Kalb Medical’s bid to build the Lithonia hospital, said she has used it for emergency services for herself as well.

“I have never had a bad experience at Hillandale,” she said. “I know they do a good job. It was my daughter-in-law’s second child and she and my son said it was one of the best experiences for them. I do hope it will return. I hope we can stop it from leaving.”

Delyphne Lomax, a longtime member of the Hillandale hospital’s Community Advisory Board, said she is disappointed to see the hospital’s services cut, but that it is a sound decision.

“When we saw the numbers, it made sense,” said Lomax, who attended the hospital’s briefing for advisory members Thursday morning. “Many women are still using the North Decatur center. It’s a brand new state-of-the-art center. It’s sad, yes, but from a financial standpoint it had to happen. I would rather not have maternity than not have a hospital.”

Julia Hunter Jones, who worked for more than 20 years to get the hospital built and was its first administrator, said she was not surprised at the news because of the critical state of all of the state’s hospitals.

“It’s not just Grady,” she said. “It’s scary right now. Given this economy, it makes sense. There is a state-of-the-art Women’s Center nine miles away and mothers are going to the newer center. In different economic times, both centers would flourish.”

DeKalb Medical’s management met with Hillandale physicians late Thursday to update them on the changes.

Iverson said they will be working with obstetricians to notify women who are scheduled to deliver babies after April 17. She said that the North Decatur campus will be offering special tours to those women ahead of their delivery dates.

Iverson said the Women’s Center features a warm, spa-like décor similar to the Hillandale campus and includes a mother-baby boutique and lactation center, educational space and a bistro.

To offset the loss of the maternity service, Iverson said the Hillandale hospital will gain a pediatric emergency center, and services for strokes, cancer and heart disease, illnesses that disproportionately affect South DeKalb residents.

She said the Hillandale hospital sees a lot more children than expected for after-hours and weekend urgent care, and the pediatrics emergency room will open adjacent to its ER by the fall.

At press time, details were murky about cost of the new services and when they would begin. Iverson said the cost and opening date will be determined later by the board.

A $5.7 million Cancer Center being build by Dr. Dale McCord, will open at the Hillandale campus this summer. It will offer radiation and chemotherapy treatment for prostate and other kinds of cancers.

Radiation oncologists Sasha Hyatt and David Holladay, who have expertise in treating prostate cancer with intensity modulate radiation therapy (IMRT), will locate there.

To support the new emphasis on heart disease, Dr. Timothy Milner, a vascular surgeon, will relocate from North Decatur to Hillandale.

Iverson said she understands that they cannot address strokes, cancer and heart disease without dealing with diabetes, so they will also offer diabetes education.

“We will look at what else we need to do,” she said. “We will beef up screenings and education programs to get people educated and treated.”