As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact our country and the world, The Birthplace at Nantucket Cottage Hospital is working hard to ensure your health and provide all of our patients exceptional care while at the same time minimizing risk of COVID-19 spread.  We are fortunate that Nantucket has had only a small number of COVID-19 cases to date, but we must remain vigilant in our prevention methods until we reach a point when it is safe to start to remove precautions. For our pregnant patients and new mothers, we are committed to having the best balance possible between the essential care needed for your pregnancy and keeping you, your family, and our health care workers as safe as possible.  We would like to update you on several new policies at the hospital that are related to pregnancy care:

• In order to minimize the number of visits you need to make to the hospital but still assure best outcomes, we have grouped your prenatal visits and ultrasounds to essential points in pregnancy, and in some cases we will add in visits by phone or video devices.  In all cases, we will be sure you have the care you need and can add prenatal visits if needed for specific circumstances or concerns.
• For all office visits and ultrasounds, you will need to enter the hospital through the Emergency Department doors.  Upon entering the hospital, you will be asked if you have any respiratory or viral illness symptoms and you will be given a mask to wear while inside the hospital.  At this time we do not allow visitors to accompany you to office visits and ultrasounds.
• All patients admitted to the hospital for delivery are encouraged to bring one support person to be with them through the delivery and postpartum stay.  Given the ongoing pandemic, and in line with current hospital policy and needs to protect the health of our staff and other patients, the person who comes to support you must not have respiratory or viral illness symptoms.
• All patients admitted to Labor & Delivery will now be tested for COVID-19, regardless of whether you have illness symptoms. This step is being taken to protect newborn babies in the rare circumstance that a mother has COVID-19 infection without having symptoms and to allow hospital staff to take the appropriate precautions to prevent virus spread.
• If you are pregnant and have continued to work outside your home, we can provide you with a letter to your employer recommending social/physical distancing practices and that you stop working at 37 weeks of pregnancy.  Please call the office or notify us at your next prenatal visit if you need a work letter.
• Even though we may be seeing you less in person, we always want you to notify us if you have concerns about your pregnancy or if you develop any viral illness symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose/congestion, shortness of breath muscle aches, vomiting/diarrhea) so that we can recommend appropriate care. As a reminder, our contact information is:
  • NCH Birthplace [all days, all hours]:  508-825-8228
  • NCH Office [Monday – Friday, 8:00am – 5:00pm]: 508-825-1000
    

These are extraordinary times but we remain committed to providing the best possible medical care. We are sorry that the COVID-19 pandemic prevents some of the visits and visitors that you and we are used to having. We look forward to times ahead when, soon we hope, we can be back to business as usual. Until then, please use the phone numbers above or your Patient Gateway account to let us know if there is anything we can do to help you.
 

Sincerely,

Nantucket Cottage Hospital Obstetrics Staff