St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital is located in GOP U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins’ congressional district

New reporting from NOTUS underscores the reality of rural hospitals across Georgia as St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital is shuttering its labor and delivery unit after GOP-led cuts to Medicaid “solidified” the hospital’s decision.

St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital — located in Rep. Mike Collins’ congressional district — announced their labor and delivery unit closure shortly after Evans Memorial Hospital in Claxton, Georgia announced it could be forced to cut its ICU as a result of the GOP law.

“It’s shameful for Rep. Mike Collins to blame a rural hospital for the consequences of the historic and harmful Medicaid cuts he voted for,” said Democratic Party of Georgia Senior Communications Advisor Devon Cruz. “Collins and Georgia Republicans who supported sweeping cuts to Medicaid will be forced to own the reality of gutting rural hospitals and slashing health care jobs across the state.”

NOTUS: Trump’s Budget Law ‘Solidified’ a Georgia Hospital’s Decision to Shutter Its Delivery Unit
By: Torrence Banks | October 22, 2025

KEY EXCERPTS:

• That St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital’s labor and delivery unit in Lavonia, Georgia, is about to close is clear to anyone who walks its halls.
  
• St. Mary’s Health Care System’s management told employees in September that it would consolidate its labor and delivery services in Athens, Georgia, which is nearly an hour from Lavonia.
  
• The health care system said that “recent Congressional cuts to Medicaid solidified this decision.”
  
• The labor and delivery unit is set to close on Monday, and would mark one of the most visible effects of the reconciliation bill that became law over the summer.
  
• Georgia mothers, lawmakers and medical experts in the region are warning that the closure would put the lives of pregnant mothers and infants at risk.
  
• “It’s pretty shitty to get rid of a unit that was critical access for women who couldn’t afford to make it to the other hospitals,” a former nurse in the unit, who requested anonymity for fear of professional retribution, told NOTUS.
  
• “A lot of these women are either going to have babies on the road because they can’t make it in time, or they’re gonna just go into labor and go into the ER here, and hope that the ER can deliver their baby,” the nurse continued. “Because a lot of people think that that’ll be the same, and it’s not.”
  
• The reconciliation bill cuts more than $1.1 trillion in Medicaid, and an estimated 11.8 million people could be left uninsured by 2034 […]
  
• Hospitals across the country — and particularly the South — are facing financial dilemmas as a result, from Lavonia to Claxton, Georgia, and across state lines to Louisiana, Mississippi and beyond.
  
• St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital’s labor and delivery unit provides the type of services that a coalition of policymakers and activists with wide-ranging beliefs are warning will be missed.
  
• The hospital’s labor and delivery unit is the only delivery unit in a nearly hour radius for people who live in Lavonia, which is located in Franklin County, and the surrounding towns and cities.
  
• Current and former staff told NOTUS that the hospital typically delivered more than 300 babies a year, and that the majority of the women who visited the unit relied on Medicaid for service.
  
• Lavonia has a population of a little more than 2,000 residents, and it is represented by Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who voted for the reconciliation package.
  
• “The closure of St. Mary’s labor and delivery unit due in part to Medicaid cuts in the GOP budget law puts families at serious risk,” Ossoff said. “Georgia has already lost nine rural hospitals in 15 years, and now more are being forced to cut vital services because of Republican-led Medicaid cuts.”
  
• Shere Wilbon, a mother who lives in Royston, Georgia, who had three of her sons at St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital, told NOTUS that she gave birth to her youngest son within 30 minutes of arriving in the delivery unit.
  
• Wilbon said that if she had to travel farther, she “probably would have had him in the car.”
  
• She said if she could, she would express to Collins the importance of the hospital.
  
• “I would tell him that it’s important to have small community hospitals in rural areas. And it’s important, especially for high-risk mothers, they have to go far,” Wilbon said. “There should be some kind of funding to help those that need that maternity ward in our area.”