Maine lawmakers hear ideas about how to preserve birthing centers
Over 40 people attended a hearing before the Maine Legislature’s Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services Committee in Augusta on Thursday. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer)
A Maine legislative committee listened on Thursday to ideas about how to maintain birthing centers after the recently announced decision to close a maternity ward in Damariscotta touched off a statewide debate.
Citing low birth volume and difficulty recruiting staff, the MaineHealth board of trustees voted this month to close the birthing center at Lincoln Hospital. A grassroots group, Gov. Janet Mills and candidates for governor had urged MaineHealth to delay the decision.
If the maternity ward closes as planned in December, it would be the 12th birthing center to close in Maine since 2015.
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Dr. Rose Fuchs, a family doctor in Patten who delivers babies in Aroostook County, told the Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services Committee on Thursday that despite barriers — including travel time and the closure of Houlton Regional Hospital’s birthing center in 2025 — the state can come up with solutions.
“I believe we can solve this problem and stop the closures,” Fuchs said.
Fuchs predicts that failing to improve access for families who now face having to drive hours to get to a birthing center will result in preventable deaths.
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“It’s not a question of if a death will occur, it’s when,” Fuchs said.
The committee heard a number of possible solutions from experts, including from the Maine Section of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Maine Hospital Association. The committee agreed to meet again to discuss the issue in late September. The next legislative session begins in January.
“This is a huge problem, and it’s going to take a lot of people sitting down and figuring it out,” Rep. Anne-Marie Mastraccio, D-Sanford, said during the hearing Thursday.
Dr. Lisa Torgersen, a family medicine physician for Northern Light AR Gould Hospital in Presque Isle, told the committee that she saw the devastating impacts of closing the maternity ward at Rumford Hospital in 2023.
“Maine should be investing in rural maternity care, and not letting it disappear,” Torgersen said.
Dr. Andrew Mueller, CEO of MaineHealth, said that the health system didn’t want to shutter maternity services at Lincoln Hospital, but has to because of the workforce challenges and low birth volume. Lincoln Hospital delivers about 130 babies per year.
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“This was an incredibly gut-wrenching thing we had to do,” Mueller said at the hearing.
Sally Weiss, vice president of workforce policy and strategic readiness for the Maine Hospital Association, told lawmakers that payment reform and an improved workforce should be among the priorities.
Weiss said the state could try to lure healthcare workers to Maine by increasing financial incentives, such as student loan repayment programs, provide training so that more family doctors can deliver babies, and increase the number of midwives in the state.
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Damariscotta community members fight to keep birthing center open
While MaineHealth, the largest hospital system in Maine, did not cite finances as a reason to close Lincoln Hospital’s birthing center, many rural hospitals are struggling financially.
Weiss said paying hospitals for readiness to deliver babies would help because, with declining birth rates, reimbursing based entirely on the number of deliveries results in less money for hospitals that maintain maternity wards.
The Maine obstetrics and gynecology association recommended several solutions, including improving maternal transportation and in areas where maternity wards have closed, maintaining prenatal and postpartum care. When announcing the closure in Damariscotta, MaineHealth said it would keep and expand prenatal and postpartum care at Lincoln Hospital.
Leah Hurwitz, of Round Pond, said that if she hadn’t lived close to Lincoln Hospital, she believes her daughter, born in November, would have died because of a complicated delivery. The next-closest hospitals to Hurwitz, in Brunswick and Rockport, were about a 50-minute drive.
Hurwitz, 36, and a mom of two, said she won’t have more children if the Lincoln Hospital birthing center closes.
“This is not how we get young people to have more babies,” Hurwitz said during the hearing. “It’s worth trying to keep the service going. We need it.”
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Joe Lawlor writes about health and human services for the Press Herald. A 24-year newspaper veteran, Lawlor has worked in Ohio, Michigan and Virginia before relocating to Maine in 2013 to join the Press. More by Joe Lawlor
