Tim Harty, The Business Times

Intermountain Health Bloomin’ Babies Birth Center is closing March 28, but the building won’t be without a birth center for long.

Tender Gifts Birth & Wellness Center plans to open its doors at the 2241 N. Seventh St. facility in May. The birth center will be modeled after the Tender Gifts Birth & Wellness Center in Fort Collins and have the same owner, Althea Hrdlichka.

Hrdlichka said she had been eyeing Grand Junction as the place for a second location for a little more than a year. She didn’t wish for Bloomin’ Babies to close, but she knew that was a possibility.

“I know some of the birth workers in that community,” she said, “and they also know how I function in my birth center in Fort Collins, and they said this would be a really great thing there, especially if that birth center shut down. And I think there was just chatter for a while there that that was going to potentially happen, and it did.

“And so that was kind of where I went, ‘OK, I guess this is what we’re doing.’”

On. Feb. 17, Intermountain Health announced on the hospital’s website that Bloomin’ Babies will close “due to steadily declining birth rates in Mesa County and unsustainable decreases in the number of new patients at Bloomin’ Babies Birth Center in Grand Junction.”

That information did not deter Hrdlichka.

“I had the conversation with them as well,” she said. “I’ve had a successful birth center in Fort Collins, and so I understand what it takes to be able to run a birth center sustainably, and the reality is that birth centers are not cash cows. They’re not going to make as much money as a hospital would like.”

Hrdlichka added the nature of a hospital is to run a birth center like a hospital, “and the reality is that the way that the hospital runs it is way more expensive … there’s way more people than actually needed to run a facility like that.

“And so I think that’s the biggest thing is understanding the demographic, understanding the budget and what is needed and what is not needed. There’s just a lot of waste when it comes to a hospital trying to run it like a hospital. And no fault of theirs in the sense that that’s what they know, right? 

“So, am I concerned? No, I’m not concerned at all.”

Hrdlichka said she won’t have access to the Grand Junction building until May 1, then, “We are gonna do some restructuring, remodeling as far as updating, making it a little bit more modern, if you will.”

The client rooms will be changed to be similar to the rooms in the Fort Collins birth center, which Hrdlichka acknowledged is “very different.”

The client rooms will be equipped for water births and have birth slings.

Initially two rooms will be available for expecting mothers.

Tender Gifts also is licensed by the state to be an outpatient facility, and Hrdlichka said women come in to have their baby and usually leave within three to four hours after birth.

“It’s really a perfect segue,” she said, “because some people don’t want to do home births, but we provide home births and birth center births here in Fort Collins. And we may do that (in Grand Junction) as well.”

Hrdlichka anticipates starting with about 10 employees in the Grand Junction location, and she’d like to grow that to about 25 employees, matching the staffing at the Fort Collins location.

Of her Fort Collins staff, she said, “They’re not all full time because I’m a really big proponent of having a balance with moms that also want to be in birth work. So, we have a lot of part-time employees that then get to stay home with their babies and children the other times of day.”

Among the staff will be nurse practitioners, which allows for the facility to be more than a birth center.

“Our idea is to be a whole wellness center,” Hrdlichka said. “Our goal is to do full-scope deliveries, prenatal and the postpartum period, also well-woman visits and ultrasounds, labs in house, all the above.

“And then what we have done (in Fort Collins) and we will bring in (Grand Junction) as well is full family care and nurse practitioners to care for our families, pediatric nurse practitioners, and so that’s kind of what our goal is.”

Hrdlichka added Tender Gifts in Grand Junction will have all types of midwives: certified professional midwives; certified nurse midwives; and potentially certified midwives.

If there’s a lot of the Grand Junction location mirroring the Fort Collins location, that’s intentional, as Hrdlichka said the systems in Fort Collins are working well. But that doesn’t mean Grand Junction can’t have differences. Hrdlichka said when she learns more about the Grand Junction community and what it wants, certain things can change accordingly.

“I’m trying to do as much as possible that the community wants,” she said.

MEET TENDER GIFTS’ OWNER

Althea Hrdlichka, who in May will open Tender Gifts Birth & Wellness Center in Grand Junction, will have a meeting with the Grand Junction community on March 21, 6 p.m., at the Colorado Birth Collective, 600 Rood Ave. in downtown Grand Junction.

“I’m opening it up for everyone to come and chat with me and get to know me a little bit,” she said.

Tender Gifts Birth & Wellness Center will move into the building at 2241 N. Seventh St., where Bloomin’ Babies is until March 28, when Intermountain Health will close the business.