Inspira’s expansion of its maternity unit doesn’t just mean more beds. It means a better experience.
Earlier this month, Inspira Medical Center Mullica Hill opened an expanded maternity unit that nearly doubles the hospital’s maternity footprint to about 36,000 square feet, raising staffed maternity beds from 20 to 38. But the square footage only tells part of the story.
A mother used to deliver her baby at Mullica Hill and stay in that same room — same bed, same four walls — through recovery. Now she moves. After delivery, she’s transferred to a dedicated postpartum room: more spacious, more private, designed for healing rather than labor.
“A really nice, private, relaxing, almost like a non-medical environment for moms and families to recover and welcome their new one,” is how Lydia Stockman, Inspira’s executive vice president and chief clinical officer, describes it.
That one change — separating where a baby is born from where a mother heals — is the engine behind the expansion, and it does two things at once. It gives new mothers a noticeably better recovery experience. And it frees up delivery rooms fast enough to more than double the hospital’s overall capacity.
***
Mullica Hill had been operating under an LDRP model — labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum all in one room, meaning a mother never moved once she checked in. It works well at lower volumes. It stops working once a hospital crosses a certain threshold.
“The threshold for making that decision with volume is when you start to exceed anywhere from 100 to 200 births a month, and we’re right there in the middle, around 150,” Stockman said.
“We essentially outgrew our current space pretty quickly.”
So Inspira built out. Using space at the front of the hospital, the system added a dedicated postpartum unit — allowing mothers to deliver, then move to a separate, more spacious room for recovery, without disrupting the existing unit during construction.
The shift also solves an efficiency problem. Under the old model, a mother recovering in a delivery room blocked that room from the next delivery.
“We’ve literally tripled the delivery space, and now have postpartum beds to move those moms to,” Stockman said.
To be precise: the unit’s physical footprint has doubled, not tripled. But because mothers now move out of delivery rooms faster, the hospital’s overall throughput — how many births it can handle — increases well beyond that doubled square footage.
“The space hasn’t doubled, but it allows us to have higher throughput with the volume,” Stockman said. “We’ll have a lot more capacity.”
***
The new rooms bring more than extra beds. Every room is equipped for what’s known as a “team birth” model — a certified approach in which nurses huddle with the patient and family throughout the stay, not just at admission.
“They’ll huddle with the moms or the family. They’ll also huddle during any shift handoff and at intervals — and if patients request additional huddles, the team’s always ready to respond,” Stockman said.
Mullica Hill is already certified as a team birth site; Inspira’s Vineland location is pursuing the same certification. The hospital is also certified “Baby-Friendly,” reflecting its commitment to breastfeeding support, with lactation consultants available to mothers who choose it.
Inspira still practices couplet care — keeping mother and newborn together with the same nurse throughout the stay — but Stockman said the new postpartum unit gives that model room to breathe.
“That postpartum unit allows for the nurses to really dedicate that time to that moment,” she said. “Helping to support new moms with a brand new infant, a lot of education and teaching.”
That includes mental health resources for new mothers, an area Stockman said the hospital takes seriously given how common postpartum struggles can be — especially when a delivery doesn’t go as planned.
The unit is also built for higher-risk pregnancies, a growing share of Mullica Hill’s patients as more mothers deliver at an older age. The hospital offers maternal-fetal medicine and an intermediate care nursery on site, with an even higher level of care available at Inspira’s Vineland campus.
***
The expansion isn’t happening in isolation. It’s the first completed piece of a broader $257 million campus project at Mullica Hill that also includes a new five-story, 150,000-square-foot tower, expected to open in early 2027.
“I think it really just depends on location, and it does depend on population,” Stockman said, referring to the national trend of maternity ward closures. “But that’s not our experience here in Gloucester County, for sure.”
Mullica Hill opened at the end of 2019. Stockman, who joined four years ago, said the hospital’s growth has outpaced expectations ever since.
“Since I’ve gotten here, my entire job has been focused on growth and space and expanding our services,” she said. “It’s really exciting for this community.”
Stockman expects the new unit to draw attention beyond the immediate area, too — delivery, unlike many hospital visits, is one of the rare choices a patient gets to make in advance.
“With every shiny new penny, you’re definitely going to experience that,” she said. “I think parents will come and visit and take a look at the space and will want to deliver here — as well as because of the physicians, the nurses and the care that we provide.”
For information about Inspira Medical Center Mullica Hill, go to inspirahealthnetwork.org.
