EDITORIAL: Hospital’s birth center a vital service that should continue

Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, June 28, 2023

For more than a century, women have had the option of giving birth to their children in the Baker City hospital. This is a vital service to the community — indeed, an all but mandatory one in a city of 10,000 people that’s 43 miles from the nearest other hospital and where the main driving route to that hospital closes temporarily due to winter weather several times most winters.

It’s a service that should be preserved.

But one that’s in jeopardy.

The Saint Alphonsus Health System announced on June 22 that the birth center at the hospital will close July 30.

If that happens it would be devastating for Baker County — and of course in particular for women who are either pregnant and due after that date, or who hoped some day to deliver a child or children in the Baker City hospital.

The birth center closure would create a glaring gap in Eastern Oregon, leaving Baker City as the largest city in the region without a birth center, and putting women, and their babies, at potential risk.

Cities with much smaller populations — Burns, John Day, Enterprise — would offer maternity services while Baker City does not.

Although the prospect of the birth center closing is terribly disappointing, the process that led to this point is also troubling.

Groups that not only should have been aware of the looming situation, but also involved in discussions aimed at avoiding such a fate, instead expressed surprise at the announcement.

That includes the four local doctors who work for St. Luke’s Clinic-Eastern Oregon Medical Associates but also deliver babies in the hospital.

Also the nurses association.

And the two hospital advisory boards.

This lack of communication suggests that those who made the decision thought it of little value to discuss the situation with people who are directly affected, including the doctors and nurses who residents rely on to care for them and their children.

Doctors and nurses told the Herald they wonder whether the decision to close the birthing center was made at the corporate level — Trinity Health of Michigan owns the Saint Alphonsus Health System, which bought the Baker City hospital in 2010 and also owns hospitals in Ontario, Nampa and Boise.

The hospital’s recent financial trends are negative, to be sure.

According to data from the Oregon Health Authority, total revenue dipped by 12.7% in 2022, and the hospital’s amount of “bad debt” — unpaid patient bills — increased to $1.2 million, the most since 2013. A spokesperson for Saint Alphonsus said financial losses in the birth center were one of several factors that contributed to those figures.

Yet doctors and nurses both pointed out that birth centers, and obstetrics in general, do not as a rule generate profits. Also, the hospital has already closed the intensive care unit, a step that doctors and nurses both believed, based on conversations with hospital administrators, was intended in part to help ensure the birth center would not suffer the same fate.

Saint Alphonsus also said the decision to close the birth center was based in part on a decline in the number of babies delivered at the hospital. But doctors pointed out that births fluctuate from year to year. The number of babies born to Baker County women — including births at home and at hospitals outside the county — has been relatively steady for the past several years, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

Saint Alphonsus’ announcement about the birth center has prompted predictable reactions from the community — fear and anger being two of the more common.

But it also has roused people to rally and try to figure out how to avoid this fate.

Coincidentally, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden had scheduled a town hall meeting in Baker City just three days after the hospital’s announcement. About 300 people turned out for the event, including many women, doctors, nurses and others directly affected by the proposed birth center closure. Wyden vowed to help, although it’s not clear what specific actions the senator could take in the next month.

Members of the two hospital advisory boards have scheduled a July 3 meeting with Saint Alphonsus administrators. Baker County Commission Chairman Shane Alderson is trying to arrange meetings, as well, and he’s enlisted help from recently retired commissioner Mark Bennett.

Ultimately, though, the most vital voices might well come from the community.

Dr. Lily Wittich, one of the four local doctors who deliver babies at the hospital, said on June 22 that “our most fervent hope is that people in the community will recognize that this is a service the community wants and will rise up and say this isn’t acceptable.”

Many have already done so. More need to add their voices to the chorus.

Less than a year ago, Saint Alphonsus officials gathered at Quail Ridge Golf Course to celebrate the hospital’s 125th birthday. Having honored the past, those who make decisions about the hospital’s future, and its place in the community, need to recognize that a birth center is an integral service. They need to commit to ensuring that the current generation has the same access that more than half a dozen past generations did.