Clinical Facilities

Prentice Women's Hospital and Maternity Center

Prentice Women’s Hospital and Maternity Center of Northwestern Memorial Hospital offers a comprehensive, patient-centered program for women’s and infants’ health. Prentice Hospital is the largest obstetrics and gynecology program in a 14-state region and the most popular birthing center in Illinois. Volume has grown tremendously in recent years, with more than 10,600 births in 2006. This represents a significant increase from a decade ago, when 4,200 babies were born at Prentice. Due to this tremendous growth, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Board of Directors and the Northwestern Memorial Corporation Executive Committee approved the development of a new women's hospital, and construction began in 2004. This project was completed in October 2007.

The medical staff at Prentice provides a full range of obstetric and gynecologic care and includes expertise in all of the related subspecialties. The Maternal-Fetal Medicine Program specializes in handling high-risk obstetrics, including multiple gestation and diabetes in pregnancy. Another clinical care and research program focuses on treatment of patients infected with HIV.  A multidisciplinary team of physicians and staff performs diagnosis and treatment of fetal anomalies. The Level III Renee Schine Crown Special Care Nursery has 86 beds and is staffed at all times by neonatologists. These are a few examples of the range of obstetric and gynecologic activities at Prentice.

Coupled with a busy obstetrics volume is a state-of-the-art gynecology service. Among the significant features are the dedicated and separate gynecologic operating rooms. Both inpatient and outpatient surgeries are performed, including approximately 1,500 diagnostic and operative laparoscopies and hysteroscopies. Gynecologic oncologists perform approximately 1,000 procedures for women with cancers of the reproductive system and have recently initiated an ovarian cancer screening program to monitor women at high risk for this disease. The Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility provides a full range of infertility treatments including approximately 600 in vitro fertilization cycles last year.