Rural families travel hours to San Antonio for neonatal care

Families in San Antonio often have close access to specialized neonatal care.

For many parents in surrounding rural communities, that care can mean hours on the road, time away from work, and added financial strain.

Bexar County has 10 neonatal hospitals ranging from Level 1 to Level 4.

Nearby, Comal County has two Level 2 neonatal special care facilities.

Guadalupe County has a Level 1 well-baby nursery, though officials there said a neonatologist is on staff who can provide specialized care.

But families living in 22 counties surrounding Bexar County may have to drive up to four hours to reach higher-level neonatal services.

For Julissa Rios, a mother from Del Rio, that meant making weekly trips to San Antonio during her pregnancy. Her original health care provider in Val Verde County couldn’t provide the level of care she needed while expecting natural triplets.

“It was just back and forth,” Rios said. “It was a lot of back and forth.”

At 34 weeks, Rios delivered two girls and one boy at Mission Trail Baptist Hospital in San Antonio.

Dr. Isabel Basaldu-Prado, medical director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Mission Trail, said the hospital regularly sees families from rural areas.

“Quite a bit,” Basaldu-Prado shared. “At Mission Trail, a lot of the moms from the outlying communities, because we are the first hospital, the first NICU, coming in from that side of town. We can get a lot of moms from the southern part of the state.”

Basaldu-Prado said rural communities often lack Level 1 through Level 4 neonatal care because of finances, staffing, and demand.

She said it can be more practical to centralize specialized resources in areas where providers have the equipment and experience to care for high-risk mothers and babies.

“It’s much easier to have different areas where you have all the resources together and bring patients here, rather than try to divide the resources into little areas and maybe not having the experience or the people that can take care of that,” she explained.

For families like Rios’, those trips can be difficult.

“It’s a lot,” Rios said. “It was a lot because I have two kids at home.”

Rios said support from Ronald McDonald House helped cover her stay until she and her babies were ready to go home.

Still, her husband had to return to work, leaving the family separated during an already stressful time.

“He left a day and a half ago, and it’s been really hard,” Rios said. “It’s been very hard on both of us, but we’ve got to work.”

Rios said expanding specialized neonatal care into more rural areas would make a major difference for families like hers.

“If they could branch out into more rural areas, it would be great,” she said.

Mission Trail Baptist Hospital is currently a Level 2 neonatal facility, but Basaldu-Prado said Baptist Health System is working to raise the hospital to a Level 3 NICU facility.

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