In a sudden about-face, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital announced Thursday evening it will keep its birth center open.
“The Board believes strongly that access to local maternity care is essential to the health and well-being of our community,” Chloe Learey, the chair of the hospital’s board of directors, said in a statement. “We are encouraged by the progress that has been made and by the opportunity to continue improving how we deliver care.”
The abrupt announcement comes as a surprise. Gov. Phil Scott had rejected the hospital’s prior entreaties for a lifeline. Hospital leaders had submitted a budget to regulators that assumed the birth center would close at the end of December, and said as recently as August they saw few realistic paths to sustaining obstetric services.
A press release issued by the hospital said “a significant new opportunity” came on Sept. 8, when BMH received funding approval through the state’s federally funded Rural Health Transformation Program. But a hospital spokesperson, Gina Pattison, said BMH was still awaiting final details on how much the grant would provide.
The financially troubled hospital announced in July that it would close its birth center, citing multi-million-dollar losses year over year. But community members and the hospital’s obstetric staff, including midwives and doctors, have led a grassroots effort to convince its leaders to change course.
Corina Tennant, the head of the hospital’s obstetrics department, has led the charge. She said a call-out she and her group put out for fundraising online has brought in $325,000 in pledged donations since last week.
“These are not uber-rich people. These are people who, like, saw the risk of losing this and dug deep into their pockets and gave an amount of money that they’ve probably never given to any cause in their life,” she said.
Hospital leaders and Tennant said they’ve hashed out a plan to run the maternity unit more efficiently, including staffing changes, more appointment availability, and updated billing practices. They also expect Brattleboro Memorial will actually see more births this year than last.
“We’ve promised a lot. The community’s promised a lot, and we have to deliver on all of that,” Tennant said.
Maternity wards across America, and particularly in rural areas, are in trouble. Because of high fixed costs, low reimbursement rates, and a declining number of births, over half of rural hospitals in the United States no longer offer birthing services.
But Tennant hopes the industry is at an inflection point. And she plans to advocate for higher reimbursement rates, including from the state’s Medicaid program, in the months ahead.
“Part of reproductive health care is birth, and that has to be preserved and it has to be safe for us to be a just and equitable society,” she said.