The Sacred Heart Regional Perinatal Center, the region’s only dedicated center for high-risk pregnancies, recently purchased a state-of-the-art van for community outreach with a grant from Walmart.

The 15-passenger van will allow the entire high-risk pregnancy outreach team to travel throughout South Alabama and Northwest Florida to provide healthcare services to areas that do not have access to a high-risk pregnancy physician.
In addition to the van, the grant from Walmart allowed Sacred Heart to purchase two portable ultrasound machines.

The team, which consists of a maternal-fetal medicine physician, a registered nurse, two ultrasonographers, a genetics counselor, and a Florida State University College of Medicine resident physician, will see patients at the Sacred Heart outreach clinics in Mobile, Dothan and Fairhope, Ala. and in Destin and Chipley, Fla. The outreach team travels three to four times each week to these various locations.

Patients who are interested in utilizing one of the outreach clinics must be referred by their obstetrician to the satellite office. 

Services at the outreach clinics include:
• Diagnostic fetal ultrasound, including fetal echocardiography
• First trimester screening
• Amniocentesis
• Chorionic villus sampling (CVS)
• Co-management of medical complications including diabetes, hypertension, isoimmunization and thrombophilias
• Preconceptional and genetic counseling

There is currently a critical shortage of Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialists throughout the United States, and this new satellite office will allow the Regional Perinatal Center to provide their services to the areas that are most in need.

For more information on Sacred Heart’s Regional Perinatal Center, please call (850) 416-2477 or toll free at 1-866-904-8738.