Dozens of local residents and health care professionals held a last-minute rally called by the Oregon Nurses Association on Wednesday over the specter of two rural hospitals closing their maternity centers.
They gathered mid-day outside a Samaritan building in Corvallis, about an hour before board members were due to meet inside to discuss closing the birth centers at Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital, consolidating services at their hospitals in Albany and Newport.
No decision is imminent, health system officials have said, but word has spread rapidly since the topic came up at a May 14 Lebanon City Council meeting.
Stefanie McDougal, an ONA member and 20-year employee at the Lebanon center, said nurses learned last week “through the grapevine” that the nonprofit health care system was considering the closures.
“We were shocked to find out that this is something even being considered, knowing the risks that it presents to our patients,” McDougal told The Lund Report.
The potential closures also grabbed the attention of three Democratic U.S. lawmakers in Oregon: Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Val Hoyle, whose 4th District spans Lincoln and Benton counties. They wrote to Marty Cahill, Samaritan’s new president and CEO, urging the hospital system to keep the centers open.
“We have heard from concerned doctors and nurses that this decision would have devastating effects on the health and safety of expectant mothers, newborns and families,” they said in a letter.
The move would mark the latest blow to rural maternity services in Oregon. St. Alphonsus’ closed its birthing center in Baker City in 2023, and St. Charles’ closed its center in Redmond in 2019. Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center shut its center in Gresham in 2023, but the state intervened, forcing it to reopen.
But that wouldn’t happen in this case. Jonathan Modie, a spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority, said in an email that the two hospitals are not required to offer maternity services based on their licensing requirements.
Hospital births have dropped in Oregon and nationwide in recent years, with 221 babies born at the Lebanon hospital last year out of 1,445 births in Linn County, and 112 at the Lincoln City facility, a third of the 300 births in Lincoln County. Hospital administrators say the services are expensive and that insurers, especially Medicaid, don’t pay the full cost. About 60% of the mothers giving birth at the two hospitals last year were on Medicaid, Modie said.
Medicaid pays 56 cents for a dollar of services, according to the Hospital Association of Oregon, but the Oregon Health Plan pays even less for births: 44% of the cost, Modie said.
‘On the brink’
Hospitals across the state are “on the brink,” according to the hospital association’s latest report, with the difference between revenues and costs, or operating margins, lagging the national average.
“Around half of the state’s hospitals are losing money on operations,” the report said. “More than two-thirds of hospitals aren’t making enough money to do things that patients expect, like updating facilities and replacing outdated equipment.”
The U.S. lawmakers acknowledged the financial difficulties that hospitals are facing, but they urged Samaritan to find creative solutions to keep the centers open.
“Low volumes of births, workforce shortages and challenging reimbursement rates make it difficult for rural hospitals to continue offering birthing services,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Cahill. “However, we have also seen the negative impacts of labor and delivery unit closures on Oregon mothers and families. It will require innovative approaches, community engagement and a commitment from Samaritan Health to preserve access to safe maternal health care.”
Samaritan administrators did not immediately respond to requests for information or an interview. But in an interview with The Lund Report in March, Doug Boysen, then Samaritan president and CEO, said the nonprofit’s finances had become untenable.
“All options are on the table,” he said.
Currently nine of Oregon’s 27 smaller hospitals do not provide maternity services, and four of them are on the coast: in Bandon, Coquille, Gold Beach and Reedsport. If the Lincoln City maternity ward were to shut, patients would have to travel to Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport – about 45 minutes away. For Corvallis-area patients, the closest maternity services would be Samaritan Albany General Hospital, about a 30-minute drive.
McDougal, the Corvallis nurse, is concerned about the extra travel time.
“We serve a unique population in a rural area where they have to drive pretty far just to get to us already,” McDougal said. “Driving to the next hospital when minutes matter — we're talking life or death.”
And it’s not just residents she’s worried about. Samaritan staff in Lebanon also depend on the hospital for maternity services. McDougal has given birth three times at the hospital, and she said one of the center’s three physicians had a baby there last year.
Besides forcing mothers to drive farther, closure of one or both of the maternity services would affect local emergency services, with ambulances required to transport patients out of the area, according to Modie.
The hospitals themselves also would face emergency births: All hospitals with emergency services have to perform emergency births or care when needed.
“Hospitals that do not offer maternity services are still required to provide appropriate care to patients in labor, which may necessitate additional training for emergency department staff,” Modie said.
The nurses plan to keep up the pressure on Samaritan, with another rally planned next week. It was initially supposed to focus on contract negotiations, but fears over the potential closure will now be part of the rallying cry, said Kevin Mealy, an ONA spokesman.
He said the issue is likely to draw a bigger crowd.
“Hospitals are nonprofits and their job is to provide health care that the community needs,” Mealy said. “It's hard to say what's more important than giving birth. The rest of health care becomes a little redundant if you can't get that part right.”
