Samantha Suffich got the call that Cleveland Clinic Martin North Hospital was closing its labor and delivery unit around Thanksgiving 2024.
Struggling with low demand and staff shortages, the hospital would consolidate the services with those at its Tradition Hospital 30 minutes away. The labor and delivery unit — Martin County's only one, where a third of the county's babies were born in 2024 — officially closed last April.
Suffich had seen the writing on the wall. As CEO of the Martin County Healthy Start Coalition, a nonprofit working to expand access to prenatal care, she knew that longer travel times to birthing hospitals can spell trouble for mothers and babies. "What's our alternative?" she remembers asking.
Soon, the idea for the Treasure Coast Maternity Center was born. It would be a freestanding birth center overseen by a physician and staffed by advanced practice registered nurses, licensed midwives and medical assistants. The facility is tentatively planned to be built on county-owned land next to the Cleveland Clinic Martin South Hospital and would include four exam rooms, six birth suites, one triage room and two recovery rooms.
The effort received $1 million in state appropriations during the 2025 Legislative session. Suffich estimates her fundraising goal is at least $7 million.
"I have a lot more fundraising to do," she says. "It's important that our local community takes care of our youngest generation of babies, ensuring that every baby is born healthy, because those babies are going to be turning into the adults that keep our community going."
Last September, Martin County Healthy Start also launched its Maternity on the Move Mobile — or MOM Mobile — as a prenatal care unit for underserved communities struggling to commute to health care services. The 38-foot RV is equipped with an exam room, ultrasound imaging equipment, a lab workstation, restroom and waiting room. As of press time, it was serving 14 expecting mothers.