A baby was delivered in the emergency room at Saint Alphonsus Health Services in Baker City on Friday, Sept. 8, the first birth there since the hospital’s birth center closed on Aug. 27.

The mother and infant are healthy, said Shelly Cutler, Eastern Oregon senior specialist in marketing and communications for Saint Alphonsus Health System.

The mother and baby were transferred to another hospital with an obstetrics department, Cutler said. Due to health privacy laws she couldn’t release the mother’s name.

In an Aug. 25 memo to doctors at St. Luke’s Clinic-Eastern Oregon Medical Associates in Baker City, Dr. A. Patrice Burgess, chief medical officer for Saint Alphonsus, wrote that women in “active labor” who came to the Baker City hospital would have their babies delivered in the emergency department.

“The (emergency department) physicians and nurses have undergone education around OB emergencies and stabilization of OB patients until transport to a facility with OB services can be arranged,” Burgess wrote in the memo.