Mercy Grateful for Bank of Oklahoma Donation to Love Family Women’s Center

Work is underway on the new Love Family Women's Center on the campus of Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City. The center will be a 175,000-square-foot, four-story facility. Forty percent of the $98 million project is funded through generous donors. Bank of Oklahoma was recently added as a lead donor with a contribution to Mercy Health Foundation toward the project that will serve women and infants for years to come.

The hospital's labor and delivery and postpartum services have been at capacity for years, limiting Mercy's ability to serve patients. When construction is complete, Mercy will have a total of 73 patient rooms to serve women, increasing the capacity for deliveries by 40%.

"There's been such a huge population growth in our area over the last decade. We've needed to expand, but we just couldn't make the finances work," said Jim Gebhart, president of Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City. "Thanks to the generosity of donors like Bank of Oklahoma, this dream is finally becoming a reality. We could not have done this without their support and the support of our community."

Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City was built in the 1970s, and the existing Mercy Birthplace was designed to handle around 3,000 births a year. Nearly 4,000 babies were delivered annually at the hospital over the last two years.

"We are honored to be a part of this important project that will impact the women and families of our community and state," said John Higginbotham, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Bank of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. "We applaud the great work Mercy and its employees provide daily to enhance the quality of life and health for so many."

The Love Family Women's Center has been expertly designed and features an obstetrics emergency department staffed by obstetricians, the state's first hospital-based low intervention birthing unit and C-section suites connected to the existing surgical suites in the hospital. Postpartum rooms will be located on the third floor and connect to the hospital via a skybridge, allowing moms of babies needing a higher level of care to have direct elevator access to the neonatal intensive care unit on the fifth floor.

Construction on the project is expected to be completed in fall 2023.

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