EDITORIAL: Saint Alphonsus letter lacks a true commitment

Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, August 23, 2023

An Aug. 17 letter “to the Baker community” from two Saint Alphonsus Health System administrators was rich in the platitudes of public relations but utterly lacking in the one thing that matters most to its intended audience.

A commitment.

A commitment to making every reasonable effort to keep operating the birth center that is a vital part of a rural community hospital that’s 43 miles from the nearest other facility via a freeway that is all but certain to close, several times and for multiple hours each time, for about half the year.

The birth center is slated to close Aug. 26.

Odette C. Bolano, western region president for Saint Alphonsus, which is owned by Trinity Health of Michigan, and Dina Ellwanger, president for Eastern Oregon (including the hospital in Ontario), did make one commitment in their letter.

They pledged a $100,000 contribution to a proposed endowment that would help pregnant women with travel and lodging expenses when they go elsewhere to have their babies.

Saint Alphonsus would only contribute to the endowment, however. The administrators propose in the letter that “local business and elected leaders” create the endowment, with Saint Alphonsus offering $100,000.

Baker County women deserve better than vouchers to drive to La Grande or Ontario or Nampa to deliver their children.

The Aug. 17 letter is a curious document.

Bolano and Ellwanger emphasize that the birth center closure is due to a shortage of nurses and a significant decline in deliveries. They describe as a “false accusation” the claim that the closure is driven by financial losses.

Yet they also point out that the birth center operates at a loss, totaling $5.3 million of the past decade. The letter boasts that “this is an example of our commitment to providing care that is needed in a community.”

The next sentence reads: “And as our communities’ health needs change, we too, must change.”

But does the recent decline in deliveries, a trend too short to be considered a definite projection for the future, constitute an actual change in the community’s health needs?

Women who are pregnant, or who plan to become mothers, certainly wouldn’t agree that their health needs have changed.

The number of births is a crucial factor, according to Bolano and Ellwanger. They contend in the letter that the decline in deliveries, by depriving obstetrics nurses of the chance to practice their specialty as often as in the past, has contributed to the departure of nurses, which is the primary reason the birth center is closing.

Yet OB nurses have told the Baker City Herald that they left the Baker City hospital not because of the declining birth rate, but because they were concerned that Saint Alphonsus wasn’t committed to operating the birth center. Some cited the January closure of the hospital’s intensive care unit as contributing to their anxiety.

Ultimately, the birth rate is not a compelling statistic to cite as contributing to the birth center’s impending closure.

Although the annual average for 2020-22, at 106 births, was the lowest for any three-year period since 1980, records show that the numbers fluctuate rather widely.

There were 105 births in 2015, but for the following four years the annual totals were 127, 125, 125 and 133.

Moreover, the decline that started in 2020 apparently wasn’t discouraging OB nurses for most of that period, if at all. As recently as October 2022, when Saint Alphonsus celebrated 125 years in Baker City, the birth center was fully staffed.

The staffing issues started early in 2023. That makes the decision to close the birth center, which Saint Alphonsus announced June 22, seem precipitous.

Worse still, hospital administrators have not been receptive to the pleas from local residents, county commissioners, U.S. senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek to commit to operating the birth center for at least six more months, using federal nurses.

Bolano and Ellwanger wrote in their letter that Saint Alphonsus spent $144,000 to keep the birth center open for four weeks after the initial closure date of July 30.

But why mention dollar figures in the same letter in which they dismiss as “false” the notion that the cost of the birth center is a factor? Regardless, four weeks was hardly sufficient to either resolve the nurse staffing issue, or to allow local officials to see if it’s feasible to open a birth center elsewhere in Baker City.

The six-month extension is obviously an improvement — not least for the women who will give birth during that period.

Sadly, the evidence suggests that Saint Alphonsus’ commitment to Baker City, laudable though it is in some respects, simply doesn’t include the fundamental service of delivering babies.

The Aug. 17 letter, despite its references to commitments and partnerships and long-term solutions, can’t obscure that plain truth.