Local Nurse Speaks Out as Hospital Plans Maternity Unit Closure
Duo of key meetings scheduled for Sunday and Thursday
BAR HARBOR—When the Mount Desert Island Hospital announced its planned July closure of its birthing services, this Thursday, the community was stunned.
Emily Wright, RN, and primary obstetric nurse for the hospital was stunned, too.
“The decision was made without the input of the community and without the input of the nurses,” Wright said Friday. “We found out about the closure on the day the public found out.”
The hospital said Friday afternoon that it made efforts to come up with solutions, working directly with OB and maternal health providers and staff, surgeons, and other key stakeholders and that this included a series of multidisciplinary work sessions held from June to December of 2024, and ongoing consultation and discussion over the last several months.
The Bar Harbor hospital’s announcement cited sustainability as a reason for the closure, writing that so far in 2025, there have been nine births at the critical access hospital. Last year, 32 babies were delivered at the hospital.
That reason has not been met with acceptance by many in the community. Nurses and a nurses union have organized a Sunday meeting about the closure at the MDI YWCA. That meeting is open to the public and will begin at 4 p.m.
“The nurses stand together and we stand by letting the community know that we don’t think is the best decision,” Wright said.
The hospital also has a town hall style meeting scheduled for next Thursday at the Jesup Memorial Library where administration expects to field questions from the community.
“We would really like for the community to have the full picture of what’s going on,” Wright said and encouraged attendance to the nurses’ Sunday meeting at the YWCA.
The Town Hill resident has worked at the hospital for a decade and said that she was devastated and angered by the decision.
“It’s just a really shocking decision,” she said. “It’s an essential service to the community. We’re just reeling from this.”
In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Janice Horton, RN, a 32-year veteran of the hospital’s OB department said, “MDIH administrators’ decision rips critical healthcare services from rural working families in our community. This devastating, short-sighted decision was made by administrators without any input from or dialogue with nurses and caregivers. Nurses are deeply concerned about the permanent, damaging effects this decision will have on families MDIH is supposed to serve in Bar Harbor and surrounding towns and outer islands.”
Wright said that nurses have not been included in any strategic talks for a while.
The Mount Desert Island hospital is one of many Maine hospitals that have cited declining birth rates as a reason for ending birthing services. Maine birthrates have decreased throughout the state, not just on Mount Desert Island for decades. Approximately half the amount of births happen now as opposed to the 1960s.
There will be fewer than 20 birthing units open in the entire state after this summer. Eight have closed in the past ten years, including Blue Hill Memorial Hospital. There is still an option to have a hospital birth at Northern Light Maine Coast Memorial Hospital, but for emergency situations, seamless prenatal and post natal care, that worried Wright and others.
“It’s really going to impact the community that way, losing that access to choice,” Wright said.
For Wright, the emergency births, the women coming in from the outer areas and islands, will all be impacted and the decision affects, she said, other staff members at the hospital as well as emergency services—such as ambulance providers.
“It’s really going to impact the rest of the hospital, stretching thin resources that are already stretched thin,” on the island, she said. “We have patients who travel from far away to come to use our really wonderful services which are unique and patient-focused.”
That focus and quality of care isn’t something easily quantifiable by data and budget lines.
“People should not be having babies in emergency rooms,” nor should they be having them on the side of the road as they try to get to delivery rooms in Ellsworth or Bangor. Many fear that the county is on its way to becoming a birthing desert.
In birthing deserts (a county without a maternity unit) there can be issues with transportation security and less prenatal care. A majority of those deserts are rural, and the decrease of obstetrics in rural hospital has been occurring since at least 2004. Those rural areas also tend to have more patients on Medicaid, according to a January 2023 paper in JAMA Health Forum.
Because of the Ellsworth hospital, Hancock County is not considered a birthing desert by the strictest definition. Some definitions, such as the March of Dimes’ state it those deserts are “counties where there’s a lack of maternity care resources, no hospitals or birth centers offering obstetric care, and no obstetric providers.” In the United States there are 1,104 counties that are, counties were there are no birthing facilities or obstetric clinician.
According to the American Legal Journal, “Maternity wing closures also create several pressing health equity concerns. Many women who are giving birth have no choice but drive more than 40 minutes to get to maternity care due to the shortage of providers and facilities. Some pregnant women are temporarily moving to be closer to the maternity provider. Temporary relocation is something that not everyone can afford. Geographic isolation from comprehensive health care increases the risk for complications and death. Many low-income women who are pregnant do not have the financial or reliable resources to travel long distances.”
Part of what made maternity services special at the Bar Harbor hospital is the continuity of care before, during, and after a child’s birth. That continuity of care is special, she said. It also inspires patients to return to the hospital for other care.
“I was born at MDI Hospital. Personally. I have a very vested interest in the community and the hospital,” she said and stressed that it’s an issue of birthing justice and health equity.
According to the March of Dimes, “In Maine in 2023, 1.2% of live births were very preterm, 8.3% were moderately preterm and 90.4% were not preterm. In 2023, 1 in 10 babies (9.6% of live births) was born preterm in Maine.”
Having essential services available for a community for critical situations is important for that community’s viability and to attracting young families to an area.
“We want to draw families to the island,” she said.
MDI Hospital President and CEO Christina Maguire said in a statement. “We know how much this service has meant to our community. But we must adapt to ensure the continued strength of our hospital and the care we provide. This decision, while painful, is necessary to ensure the sustainability of high-quality healthcare services for all.”
“It’s really a devastating loss for the community,” Wright said and she said she hopes that the hospital administration reverses it.
Wright has been working at the hospital for ten years, originally in various departments. She’s been in obstetrics for the last seven.
“It’s my dream job,” she said.
There are four other union nurses, she said, and they are sustained by a robust pool of per diem nurses. There are also people throughout the hospital who serve the department.
“We’ve had an overwhelming support of the community,” and local legislators, she said.
Though she had high praise for the hospital’s emergency room staff, she said that the hospital’s maternity staff is used to understanding emergency situations and recognizing them because they specialize in that care.
She said, “We are trained and poised to deliver care in any kind of emergency. We really just want our patients, in the end, to have safe and equitable care.
MDIH nurses will hold a community meeting on the closure of their hospital’s OB department this Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Mount Desert Island YWCA (36 Mt Desert St, Bar Harbor, ME 04609). Community members are encouraged to attend.
You can register to attend the hospital-run event in-person or via Zoom on the Jesup website: https://www.jesuplibrary.org/events/hospitaltownhall
Update: This story was updated at 5:49 to include a response from the hospital, which is now the fourth paragraph in the article.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.
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We all are so fortunate to have the excellent healthcare teams at MDI Hospital. Whether for emergency care, out-patient procedures, or hospital stays, MDIH nurses provide the continuity of one-to-one attention and care. ThankYou All.
It is distressing to know that there was no consultation with the nursing staff about this closure. I thought we'd moved past the days where nurses were responsible for a significant part of care, while being treated as second class citizens in hospital bureaucracies.