HOULTON, Maine — More than 200 people packed into a town hall meeting at the John A. Millar Civic Center in Houlton on Wednesday night to voice concerns about the hospital’s decision to close its birthing unit.
The group that turned out for the event included health professionals, parents and their children. Many of the attendees were part of the region’s Amish community.
“If the unit closes, in my opinion there will be dead mothers and dead babies,” said Marty Hrynick, an emergency physician who said he delivered his first baby in 1970.
Last week, Gina Brown, Houlton Regional Hospital’s Chief Operating Officer, announced that the labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum department would close on May 2.
“This is a very painful decision for us, but over the past several years, like many rural hospitals in Maine and across the nation, we have watched our OB volume steadily decline,” Brown said in a previous Bangor Daily News interview. “And although our nurses and providers have gone above and beyond to maintain the service, our volumes are making it impossible to do so.”
Brown was not immediately available to respond to the concerns expressed in Wednesday’s town hall.
The hospital’s decision is the latest in a string of labor and delivery unit closures around Maine. Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent ended those services two years ago. More recently, Belfast’s MaineHealth Waldo Hospital closed its maternity ward on April 1, and Mount Desert Island Hospital said it will shut down its unit on July 1.
But unlike in more heavily populated parts of the state, expecting parents in Aroostook County have few other options, with the region’s only remaining hospital obstetrical units in Presque Isle and Caribou. For those living in communities such as Danforth or Wytopitlock, there are no clear options since Bangor or Presque Isle are both 90 minutes away in good weather.
“I work with women in Danforth. I care for people way beyond there in Wytopitlock, and they are relying on Houlton Regional Hospital for their care,” said Dana Lincoln, a pediatric nurse practitioner. “I do fear there will be deaths, there’s no denying that.”
During Wednesday’s town hall, multiple health professionals said that during births, medical complications can turn serious within seconds, not hours.
Rose Fuchs, a Patten family physician who delivers many Amish babies in the County, asked, “How much is a life worth?”
According to the Maine State Nurses Association, the union that represents the hospital’s nurses, administrators said they will absorb the department’s 13 nurses into other hospital vacancies.
Hospital administrators have not confirmed that or explained what positions the nurses could fill.
People spoke for more than an hour at the town hall, with some of them detailing their own obstetrical emergencies and how the nurses in the hospital’s birthing unit saved them and their babies.
Naomi, a woman who only gave her first name, shared that she is a mother of four living children.
“We lost our baby when I had a uterine rupture. But I lived,” she said. “Please, on behalf of the children, keep the unit open.”
A Houlton Regional Hospital labor and delivery nurse, Natalie Rush, who led the night’s discussion, asked those attending to sign a petition calling on the administration to cancel the closure of the department, to strengthen it for the future and to bring transparency and accountability to the process.
“We love what we do and we are absolutely heartbroken and devastated that in four weeks, right before our busiest time of the year, it will close,” Rush said.
