St John of God Hospital in Bunbury will stop offering maternity services from next month thanks to a shortage of specialist medical staff and decline in demand.
In a statement, St John of God Health Care said the service has experienced a chronic shortage of midwives and there were not enough obstetricians, GP-obstetricians and paediatricians available locally.
Speaking with ABC Radio, St John of God chief executive officer Jeffrey Williams said staff shortages had proved to be the service's biggest challenge.
"Despite our best efforts and intention to bring people to, you know, to Australia from overseas, we've just been really struggling to attract people," he said.
Mr Williams said the private hospital had been working closely with its public counterpart about transitioning women to Bunbury Regional Hospital.
He said 96 pregnant women currently scheduled to have their babies at St John's would have to move to the public hospital or give birth in Perth.
St John of God would be providing extra maternity beds to the public hospital to help with the transition.
Fewer women giving birth at St John
Mr Williams also revealed findings from a recent review of St John of God in Bunbury which showed a 30 per cent decline in births at the hospital over the last five years, with more woman looking into different options when giving birth.
"We looked at a number of different options as to how we could continue to deliver the care, but unfortunately the challenge of looking at modified service models like looking at doing things differently, only doing low risk, or only doing one kind of delivery, is just not feasible.
"We have really looked at everything and our only other solution was to look at closure of the service."
He said the women affected would be offered personalised support.
"We've been working closely with our partners of Bunbury Regional Hospital to ensure that we can support them throughout this transition period and today, we're working with those mums with a range of personalised information and support to enable them to make decisions about the next steps for them," he said.
Rural healthcare 'crisis'
The nurses' union slammed the decision to close the service as "a stark reminder of the ongoing crisis in Western Australia's healthcare system, particularly in rural areas".
Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Janet Reah said the state government urgently needed to address workforce issues for regional nurses.
"Ensuring that midwives are adequately supported, incentivised, and recognised is essential to maintaining and improving maternity services across Western Australia," Ms Reah said in a statement.
"Failure to act will result in further closures and a concentration of services in metropolitan areas, disadvantaging rural communities and putting additional pressure on Perth's healthcare system."
Opposition leader Shane Love agreed that the closure was symptomatic of a broader "crisis" in nursing and midwifery across the state, which the government played a role in.
"The state government is largely responsible for ensuring that there are training places available, it's the one that actually ensures that we have the staff entering the industry," he said.
Mr Love also criticised the use of agency staff, who are paid at a higher rate, to temporarily fill vacancies across the public health system, saying it made it difficult for organisations like St John of God to compete for staff.
Bunbury Regional Hospital director Jeff Calver said in a statement it had increased staffing ahead of admitting more maternity patients "to ensure a smooth transition for patients who choose to birth locally."
He said about 30 extra women were expected to give birth at the hospital each month as a result of the St John's decision.
System under strain
Bunbury local Lilanie Janse Van Vuuren had both of her children at Bunbury's St John of God Hospital and said she was surprised to hear of its closure.
"I thought 'surely, they're not going to do that because there's not many choices here. It's not Perth'," she said.
Mrs Janse Van Vuuren claimed the minimum wait time to see a paediatrician in Bunbury was over a year, with her youngest child Lucas recently receiving treatment for swollen tonsils.
"For many people that I know in our mother's group, the wait list is a year-plus to see them [paediatricians] and it's not very good especially if it's something urgent," she said.
Mrs Janse Van Vuuren said she chose to go private in the past due to the additional support and privacy available.
"The thing about private that got me is my husband could stay with me in the hospital, it was in a room and [was] private, you got the room by yourself," she said.
Mrs Janse Van Vuuren said she wasn't planning on having any more children in the foreseeable future but if she were, she wouldn't be willing to travel to Perth for care.
"If there's no other option then public would be it, but I wouldn't think about going out to Perth or anything, [it's] too far away from home," she said.