Largest fundraising campaign in Mercy history complete for Love Family Women’s Center

Mercy Health Foundation reached its $40 million fundraising goal for the Love Family Women’s Center thanks to an early Christmas donation from a generous local family. Mark Davenport and his mother, Pat, together gave $1.5 million to close out the two-year campaign for the women’s center project, the largest fundraising goal in Mercy’s nearly 200-year history. 

Over the past 10 years, Mercy has seen a 34 percent increase in childbirths. The hospital, built in the 1970s, was designed to accommodate up to 3,000 births annually, but the hospital makes room for nearly 4,000 births per year. In the past six months, Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City has seen an additional 217 births compared to the same time period in 2020. 

The new 175,000-square-foot women’s center will have 30 additional patient rooms, increasing the capacity for deliveries by 40 percent.
Campaign co-chairs Judy Love and Cathy Keating led the way in raising more than $30 million from Oklahoma families and businesses to complete the campaign.

The Tom and Judy Love family, for whom the center is named, gave a $10 million lead donation to kick off the project. The Sunderland Foundation of Kansas, the only out of state donor, gave $7.5 million. 

The Love Family Women’s Center will be a four-story building on the campus of Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City. It will feature an obstetrics emergency department staffed by obstetricians and the state's only hospital-based low intervention birthing center. The unit will be run by accredited midwives who are also registered nurses in collaboration with obstetricians. 

The first floor of the building will have a caesarean section unit with three suites that connect to the hospital via the existing hospital surgery suite. This strategic design allows for quick, safe access to additional services if medical emergencies occur during delivery. The second floor will house all labor and delivery suites and an antepartum unit. Postpartum rooms will be on the third floor of the facility that will connect to the hospital via a skybridge, giving mothers of babies needing a higher level of care direct elevator access to the neonatal intensive care unit on the fifth floor.
Construction is expected to be completed in fall 2023.