UPDATED: Bar Harbor Town Council Urges Hospital to Rethink Closure of Maternity Unit
Ellsworth hospital sees no issues delivering more babies.
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BAR HARBOR—The Bar Harbor Town Council, Tuesday, urged the Mount Desert Island Hospital to reconsider its decision to close its maternity unit.
Vice Chair Maya Caines read a prepared statement on behalf of the councilors about the planned July 1 closure of the Mount Desert Island Hospital’s birthing services.
“We are saddened to hear about the planned closure of MDI Hospital’s OB unit and are acutely aware of the impacts this action will have on our community. We have already seen the effects of similar closures on other communities throughout rural Maine and across the U.S. Although we know this decision wasn’t made lightly, we urge the hospital board to reconsider its decision and work with local stakeholders to find a way to keep this essential resource available,” Caines read.
Last Sunday, the OB nurses held a town hall meeting at the YWCA MDI to discuss the closure. The hospital plans to run its own meeting on Thursday at the Jesup Memorial Library.
The hospital has stated that the closure is “due to a significant decline in births, increasing financial pressures, and the challenge of maintaining specialized staff for such low-volume care. . . . Critically, with so few births, our nurses and providers cannot maintain the necessary skills and experience required for safe deliveries. Patient safety is our top concern, and ensuring that our staff can provide the highest level of care means making this difficult decision.”
Nurses have countered that argument by saying that there are protocols and techniques (including working in other hospitals with more babies being born) to keep up their skills and experience.
“In our ongoing discussions around community needs and improvements, such as building a new school or housing and infrastructure updates, the hospital is constantly brought up as a major employer and asset to the community. With that being said, the lack of the wider community’s involvement in making this decision is disappointing,” Caines read.
Those thoughts were also expressed at the nurses’ town hall meeting. Nurses have called on the community to sign a petition asking the hospital to cancel the planned July closure of its birthing unit, establish a community task force to advise the hospital’s administration, and “bring transparency and accountability to decisions that are being made about the OB department.”
“This move has implications beyond Bar Harbor–the entire island community relies on MDI Hospital to provide safe, accessible, and personalized natal care. If the hospital caregivers no longer deliver babies,” Caines read Tuesday night, “we are worried about the implications for all women’s health services in the area, as there is a potential for expectant mothers to seek pre-and postnatal care where they are planning to give birth rather than through MDI Hospital."
Councilor Matthew Hochman also expressed his individual dismay after Caines read the statement.
“We hear people come before us at a council all the time talking about being born in Bar Harbor,” Hochman said, and those people tell them that they are proud of being born in Bar Harbor.
“The thought that as of July 1 there would be no more people other than emergency births, as a general course, born in Bar Harbor is very troubling to me. That is something people are very very proud of,” Hochman said. “To see that go away would be pretty sad.”
The councilors’ statement concluded, “Councilors have been in conversation with our state representatives over the past few days to find ways that we can work towards a statewide solution to this closure and others that may come in the future. Rural medicine and women's healthcare is not a given in many communities. We do not take for granted the fact that we represent a community that cares deeply about these issues, as we saw this past weekend at the YWCA community forum. We encourage you to continue using your voices to share your concerns and work collaboratively towards solutions with the hospital. We will keep you up to date about any advocacy work we are doing on the state level.”
On Wednesday, the hospital issued the following statement, “MDI Hospital is deeply committed to the care of this community, and we have not received any communication or direct outreach from the town’s leadership or council members at this time. Our decision reflects the decline in births at the hospital and our commitment to providing safe care to our patients.”
There are potential bills in the works in the state house just around the corner, Caines said, and urged people to prepare statements to testify for those bills, anticipating a fast turn-around time.
The Bangor Daily News reports this morning that Northern Light’s Maine Coast Hospital in Ellsworth doesn’t foresee any issues accommodating any birthing mothers at its facility and is hiring more staff.
“When we look at the volume that MDI was expecting to do this year, we don’t see that it’s going to be a significant impact on the volume in our OB unit,” CEO Charlie Ronan told the Kathleen O’Brien. “We will be able to absorb those expectant moms pretty easily.”
That hospital predicts that this year it will deliver more than 300 babies. In 2023, there were 186 births at the Ellsworth facility, which had been modernized in 2022.
Update: This post was updated at 12;35 p.m., April 2, to include a statement from the hospital.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Town Hall forum on Thursday, April 3, at the Jesup Memorial Library from 4-5 p.m
Direct link to view and/or sign the petition
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The hospitals statement is false, I reached out to them on March 27th at 10:22am. And have yet to recieve a reply.