A community survey and a women's health task force presented to the House Health & Human Services Committee on July 16 that Las Vegas, New Mexico, lacks reliable local maternity and women's specialty services, forcing many patients to travel to Santa Fe or Albuquerque.
Ariel Lehi, the Anquorum fellow working with the Las Vegas Community Foundation, said the foundation's community survey gathered about 300 responses and found that about 60 percent of respondents reported traveling one to six times in the previous year for women’s health care. "There is a lack of local OB/GYN services," Lehi said, and the local labor-and-delivery unit has been closed "several times over the last handful of years." The survey respondents reported gaps in prenatal, delivery and postmenopausal care.
Lehi said options being discussed include reopening an Alta Vista OB unit, creating a women’s health clinic with a birth center, recruiting visiting specialists to hold clinics periodically, and expanding telehealth models such as ROAMS (Rural OB Access and Maternal Services). The foundation is also pursuing capital outlay and other funding to support a dedicated women’s health center adjacent to Alta Vista Hospital.
Alta Vista Regional Hospital's new chief executive, Helen Ballantyne, told the committee Alta Vista is prioritizing expansion of surgical services and women's health supports: the hospital plans to add two surgeons (an orthopedic surgeon and a general surgeon were named) and a full-time women's health nurse practitioner scheduled to start in mid-September. Ballantyne said the hospital has operating rooms and staff that could support expanded women's surgical care, and she asked lawmakers for help with capital and program funding to restore broader services locally.
Committee members and speakers emphasized that travel for maternal care imposes time, cost and safety burdens. Lehi told the committee of an instance where ice slowed travel and extended a round trip to Santa Fe; representative and community members noted geographic travel times that can exceed 120 miles round trip from Las Vegas and are longer from outlying communities.
Lehi asked lawmakers to continue funding the Maternal Health Bureau and the Maternal Mortality Review Committee and to support telehealth expansion for maternal-fetal medicine. The foundation also highlighted the ROAMS telehealth model as a candidate for replication in the region.
Lawmakers asked for follow-up data and for technical support to help track births and maternal outcomes tied to residents of San Miguel and Mora counties; Lehi said birth-record attribution is inconsistent when deliveries occur outside the home county, limiting the ability to estimate local need precisely.
The hospital said it is pursuing partnerships with UNM and other institutions on residency and telehealth models, and emphasized that restoring reliable women's-health access would also support recruitment and retention of families in the region.