Rep. Lauren H. Carson on Tuesday introduced legislation to create a state-supported fund for Newport Hospital’s Noreen Stonor Drexel Birthing Center, conditioning any public money on the hospital keeping the center fully staffed and open to community oversight.
The bill is Carson’s response to Brown University Health’s announcement earlier this month that it will keep the 10-suite labor and delivery unit open if it can secure $4.9 million a year in state and philanthropic support. That commitment ended nearly a year of uncertainty over the future of the only birthing center on Aquidneck Island, but advocates and elected officials have continued to press for a long-term plan.
Under the bill, the $4.9 million for fiscal year 2027 would be split into three roughly equal shares of about $1.63 million each: one from the state’s general fund, one from Brown Health and one raised through philanthropy. The proposed Noreen Drexel Birthing Center Fund would be administered by the Newport Hospital Foundation and used exclusively to support birthing services at the hospital.
“If Brown Health needs $4.9 million to keep the birthing center open, this fund is a way to provide that money. But if we’re committing any state funding, it has to come with strings attached. It’s not a blank check,” Carson, D-Newport, said in a statement.
To draw on the fund, Brown Health would have to maintain current staffing and service levels at the birthing center, meet reporting requirements on how the money is spent and create what the bill calls a “whole community council” to oversee the unit’s operations and future planning. The council would include elected officials, representatives of the Newport Hospital Foundation and community-based organizations, and would be required to meet at least quarterly to review outcomes, quality, safety and financial data.
The bill would also require Brown Health, working with the community, to develop a sustainability plan within a year aimed at building what Carson described as a state-of-the-art women’s and maternal healthcare facility.
Carson said the goal is to avoid a repeat of the past year’s funding crisis. She said the legislation is intended to ensure transparency, community involvement and a clear strategy for the center’s future.
The legislation is the latest in a series of bills Carson has introduced in response to the threatened closure. Earlier this year, she filed measures that would expand the state Department of Health’s review process for planned birthing center closures, condition state funding to Brown Health on the center’s continued operation and create a statewide maternal health strategy. A Senate companion to the closure-review bill is sponsored by Sen. Dawn Euer, D-Newport.
Brown Health first signaled last July that it was weighing closure of the birthing center, citing declining demand and financial pressure across its two-state operations, including an $18 million operating loss driven largely by its two Massachusetts hospitals. The decision drew opposition from the Newport City Council, Aquidneck Island legislators and the Coalition for Newport Hospital Birthing Center, which released a 53-page report this month arguing the unit is busier and more economically significant than the company’s framing suggested.
The coalition’s report found that Newport Hospital averaged about 450 births a year from 2015 through 2024, with 489 in 2024 — the second-highest total of the decade. The hospital remains the third-busiest labor and delivery unit in the state, after Women & Infants Hospital and South County Hospital, and the birthing center generates an estimated $2.7 million in annual economic activity, according to the report.
Brown Health based its decision to keep the center open on a separate review by the consulting firm Kaufman Hall, which the company has declined to release publicly, citing confidentiality.
