Southern Illinois is the heart of rural America. You’ll see farmlands, horse stables, small towns with a central square and small hospitals that have cared for generations of families. What you won’t see is maternal health and obstetrics services.
That is a problem Will Davis, president of Deaconess Illinois, intends to solve.
“Just because we’re rural doesn’t mean that it’s okay to have to drive two hours to deliver a baby,” Mr. Davis said during a panel discussion at Becker’s 14th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable in Chicago. He oversees seven of Evansville, Ind.-based Deaconess Health System’s locations across Southern Illinois.
The communities the system serves are aging. In some communities, one in four residents is over 65, and obstetrics access has been disappearing for years. Mr. Davis called the region a “60% OB desert,” pointing to the fact that of the 44 planning areas in Illinois, three have zero OB beds, and two of them overlap with his region.
The system plans to go before the Illinois Health Facilities & Services Review Board in the coming months to pursue reinstatement of OB services. It would be the first such reinstatement in the region in over a decade, and the state health department told Mr. Davis it has limited precedent for the process going in this direction.
“I don’t know the last time somebody has done this,” Mr. Davis said. “So it’s good to be a pioneer.”
The model Deaconess Illinois has been building involves coalition building and setting big goals.
“We have brought on a ton of partners,” he said. “We’re looking at working with local FQHCs, local OB-GYN groups, the local university. We’ve got a ton of partners, and we’re looking at the largest network in Southern Illinois once we get done creating this to fill this significant gap that we’re seeing.”
The build-out will be significant in cost and complexity, and Mr. Davis has been deliberate about maintaining financial accountability alongside the ambition.
“It’s not going to be a cheap adventure to get into, but definitely something that is needed,” he said. “I’ve got a CFO and COO that are keeping me in line when I get these big ideas and big pivots that say, okay, we’ve got to make sure we are hitting these marks.”
The push comes as obstetric closures have accelerated statewide and nationally. Since 2020, 16 Illinois hospitals have discontinued obstetric services, including three critical access hospitals. Twenty-three maternity service closures have been reported nationally in 2026 alone.
That’s all the more reason Mr. Davis is committed to bringing OB services back into his communities. He defined the undertaking by obligation rather than financial gain.
The OB initiative is part of a larger transformation at Deaconess Illinois. The system rebranded in 2024 after joining Deaconess Health System in 2023, completing a shift from a for-profit national model to a nonprofit regional one. Mr. Davis said that transition created the conditions for the investment an OB push requires.
“It is truly transformation,” he said. “When we talk about the rural communities that we serve in it, it is definitely time for that.”
