Northern Light Health expects to see more parents coming to its Ellsworth hospital to deliver their babies in the wake of three other hospitals in the region ending their birthing services.
Northern Light’s Maine Coast Hospital is hiring more staff to accommodate the increase in births it expects to see after Mount Desert Island Hospital closes its labor and delivery unit this summer. But, the Ellsworth hospital doesn’t believe the uptick will be overwhelming, said John Ronan, president of Northern Light’s Blue Hill and Maine Coast Hospitals.
“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,” Ronan said. “We will be able to absorb those expectant moms pretty easily.”
Mount Desert Island Hospital is the latest in a series of Maine hospitals to announce it will stop offering labor and delivery services. The Bar Harbor hospital stated the closure is due to the plummeting number of mothers giving birth, as only 33 babies were born there last year, according to a statement from the facility.
Meanwhile, other facilities, such as Northern Light Inland Hospital in Waterville, closed their labor and delivery units due to ongoing recruiting challenges for providers or financial losses. MaineHealth’s Waldo Hospital in Belfast closed its birthing facilities on Tuesday due to low birth rates and staffing shortages.
The reduction in the number of places where someone can give birth, especially in some of Maine’s more rural regions, raises concerns about how far someone in labor might have to travel to reach a hospital with the proper staff and equipment. Health care professionals also suspect more mothers may consider giving birth at home with the help of a midwife to eliminate traveling long distances to a hospital.
“How far is too far to deliver a baby?” Ronan said. “The last thing we want is a mom to not make it to a hospital.”
Smaller hospitals usually need at least a few hundred births each year to sustain their labor and delivery services, Ronan said. Without enough births, it’s difficult for a facility to staff the unit and ensure it’s safe for patients.
“Nobody wants to make the decision to close down an OB unit, because it’s so important and critical to your community,” Ronan said.
There are likely multiple reasons birth rates in Maine are plummeting, Ronan said, such as people of childbearing age leaving the state while some parents are choosing to give birth at home because of the “geographical limitations” of the state.
A few years ago, Ronan said Maine Coast Hospital redeveloped its five-bed labor and delivery unit. Since then, the hospital has seen its birth rates steadily climb because “expecting moms wanted to come to a more modern, bright facility,” Ronan said.
The Ellsworth hospital expects to deliver more than 300 babies in fiscal year 2025, compared with 186 births in fiscal year 2023, according to Ronan.
Carrie Barnes, a nurse and manager of Maine Coast Hospital’s obstetrics department, said she believes more babies are being born at the hospital because the “midwife-focused” program is attractive to families who want a less “medically intense” birthing experience while having the safety net of being in a hospital in case something goes wrong.
This means patients coming in to deliver babies are primarily supported by midwives, though doctors are available if needed. Midwives also keep the room as peaceful as possible and try to limit the amount of medication a mother is given, unless they request more.
“It’s like a home delivery,” Barnes said. “They listen to what the mother wants with limited medications, light and talk in the room. We want the baby to only hear mom and dad’s voices initially.”
Two full-time staff members were recently hired and are going through orientation now, and two more will come this summer, Barnes said. Four or five other per diem nurses were also just hired, who can come in when the hospital sees more births.
Though families may need to drive farther to give birth, Barnes said the hospital will not be scheduling more mothers to be induced in order to ensure they make it to a medical facility.
“Babies come when they come, but we try not to schedule anything that isn’t medically necessary,” Barnes said. “Inductions aren’t something we enter into lightly, they really need to be medically necessary.”
