Hospitals in Brownstone Brooklyn have lost patients from neighborhoods like Park Slope, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens, according to a statistical analysis by The New York Times of birth trends from 1998 to 2008.

Anecdotally (and from reading Park Slope Parents) I know that for parents in Park Slope OBGYNs and hospitals in Manhattan are the norm not the exception. Yes, plenty of people have their babies at Methodist Hospital but the vast majority of parents choose Manhattan for what are perceived as superior hospitals and doctors. Here’s an excerpt from today’s NY Times:

The four Manhattan hospitals that are increasingly favored by women living in brownstone Brooklyn, especially in Park Slope, are New York University Langone Medical Center, the Roosevelt branch of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Mount Sinai Medical Center, according to The Times’s analysis.

Statistics show that Brooklynites hardly hesitate to use the local hospitals for routine emergency room care, like during the swine flu scare last year, but when it comes to having a baby, neighborhood allegiances break down.

Hospitals in or close to the affluent Brooklyn neighborhoods are not necessarily hurting. Births at New York Methodist Hospital, in the heart of Park Slope, soared by 40 percent in the 10-year period. It ranked among the city’s five hospitals with the most births in 2008, along with Maimonides (which had more births than any other hospital in the state) and Lutheran Medical Centers in Brooklyn, Roosevelt and Mount Sinai.

Yet, the numbers of births at Methodist to mothers from Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens dropped over that time as more chose Manhattan; the hospital’s growth came from the black, West Indian and Lubavitcher neighborhoods in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights; Latino and Satmar neighborhoods in Greenpoint and Williamsburg; and the West Indian, Haitian and blacks neighborhoods in East New York, Flatbush and East Flatbush.

A spokeswoman for Methodist, Lyn S. Hill, said the hospital analyzed its data a little differently, and found that births had remained constant over the last 20 years from the combined neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn and Park Slope. “Our patient population ethnicity closely mirrors that of Brooklyn,” Ms. Hill said.