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The board of MaineHealth Waldo Hospital in Belfast announced Thursday that it will be closing the facility’s labor and delivery unit next spring.
The closure will take effect April 1, 2025.
Administrators had been reviewing the viability of those services since last summer, based on what they have said are declining birth numbers and difficulty finding staff.
In response to that review, many Belfast-area residents have spoken out against cutting the services, with more than 200 people showing up to a public forum hosted by the hospital in August.
A number of other Maine hospitals have cut or reduced their birthing services in recent years, but the change in Belfast stands out because it’s a growing community, unlike many of the other places where similar changes have happened.
The parent group of the hospital, MaineHealth, will continue to offer labor and delivery at Pen Bay Hospital in Rockport, which is roughly 40 minutes away from Belfast by vehicle.
“We know that many people in the community feel passionately that Waldo Hospital should maintain inpatient labor and delivery services despite the significant challenges associated with doing so,” said Syrena Gatewood, chair of the board that oversees both midcoast hospitals. “However, the facts are compelling. Our community will have access to more reliable, safer care for expectant mothers and their babies if we partner with Pen Bay to provide this service.”
The hospital chose April 1 as the closure date so that patients who are at least four months pregnant won’t have to change their delivery plans in Belfast, according to a press release about the closure.
Hospital administrators said that the annual number of births at the Belfast hospital has been “consistently low” despite a statewide increase in birth rates, with the total falling to 109 in 2023. They pointed to data suggesting that, in 2022, just 27 percent of expecting parents in the hospital’s service area actually went there to give birth. They pointed to an analysis from 2021 that found, on average, no parents who gave birth would have had to travel more than 22 extra minutes to reach the next closest hospital.
It can be difficult for hospitals to safely provide birthing services if they only perform a small number every year, according to research. Some hospitals have identified 200 as the minimum number that should be performed.
Waldo Hospital officials also said that it’s gotten harder to recruit staff to perform the specialized care required for labor and delivery, but that they have expanded offerings to meet a growing demand for other services such as oncology and cardiology. They also aim to increase their pediatric care offerings and bolster pre- and post-natal care at Waldo Hospital.
Denise Needham, president of MaineHealth’s Belfast and Rockport hospitals, said that “all other options had been explored and exhausted” before the board made the decision to end the services. The decision was not driven by a need to reduce Waldo Hospital’s operating costs, she said.
“We don’t anticipate decreasing our operational costs because we plan to build out a more robust outpatient program,” Needham said. “In order to maintain all of the pre- and post-natal services, that still requires a significant investment. We see it as an investment in the health of our community by building out those outpatient programs.”
Last summer, many people spoke out against any cuts in the labor and delivery services at the Belfast hospital, raising concern both for the parents and children who rely on those services and the community’s ability to attract young families.
Hospital officials took all that feedback to heart, Needham said. But ultimately, she argued that the decision to close the labor and delivery unit will help the hospital to ensure that it’s prioritizing safety and quality.
“Ultimately, we have an obligation to the community to provide safe and high quality care to our community, and sometimes those decisions have to be made and they’re a very difficult decision and they’re not always in alignment with the public opinion,” Needham said. “In this case, we had to consider the quality and safety and sustainability of the program above all else, and that is how we approached this.”