Women on Aquidneck Island have new healthcare options with the opening in early November of an office of South County Health’s Center for Women’s Health in a building near Newport Hospital and shared with a branch of South County Health’s urology department.
The new office at 38 Powell Ave., Newport, arrives amid nationwide shortages of doctors, with ob-gyn professionals in particular short supply.
Dr. Martha Moe, AVP/Medical Director, who accepts patients at both Wakefield’s and Newport’s Women’s Health Centers, said the decision to open the Newport office was made because of “access” issues … “patients are unable to access healthcare, especially gynecology.” She said gynecological patients have had to wait as long as a year for appointments.
The new office (phone: 401-789-0661) is open on Mondays and Tuesdays, “hoping to expand to five days,” Moe said. Meanwhile, the Women’s Center is also offering free childbirth classes at the Newport YMCA for patients and non-patients.
The Newport office is South County Health’s fourth Women’s Center, with others in Warwick, Westerly, and Wakefield, where the health organization operates South County Health’s hospital.
South County Health also has Medical and Wellness Centers in Warwick, Westerly, and East Greenwich, a Primary Care office in Narragansett, and a Medical Office Building on the hospital’s campus in Narragansett.
Moe said that South County Health is “trying to grow primary … we really want to be a pillar in our community, providing safe, quality care.”
The healthcare system, the only independent hospital system in Rhode Island, recently said it was in discussions with a national group about affiliation, with the intent of remaining independent. They have not shared any further information, as a study of the proposal is ongoing for the next few months.
South County Health had previously been in negotiation with Yale/New Haven, but those talks eventually failed.
The system, several months ago, was involved in some controversy with a group of its own doctors, and like all healthcare organizations is navigating what Moe said is a changing landscape, with rising costs, and rising insurance costs.” She’s concerned, like many others that “if people are losing insurance benefits, people are not going to seek healthcare.”
The impact of a changing healthcare landscape has resulted in fewer medical practitioners for a variety of reasons, such as hospital closures or closures of particular practices within hospitals. Especially impacted has been women’s health.
According to Medicus Health Solutions, between 2010 and 2022, more than 500 hospitals nationwide have closed obstetrics units, “with more than 200 of those closures” in rural areas. Medicus has said the trend is continuing in 2025.
In Rhode Island, we have seen hospitals at risk of closure, and a few years ago, Westerly Hospital closed its obstetrics unit when it was merged into the Yale/New Haven system.
Medicus also said the number of ob-gyns across the U.S. met 93.4% of demand, “with significant geographic disparities. By 2035, all but six states are projected to experience inadequate supplies of ob-gyns, with a particularly severe shortfall in nonmetropolitan areas.”