DULUTH, Minn. (AP) – A growing number of rural hospitals across Minnesota have stopped delivering babies, citing costs, limited doctors and demands to consolidate birthing centers.
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DULUTH, Minn. (AP) – A growing number of rural hospitals across Minnesota have stopped delivering babies, citing costs, limited doctors and demands to consolidate birthing centers.
The number of Minnesota hospitals offering birth services fell by almost 18 percent between 2000 and 2015, Minnesota Public Radio News reported. But rural areas were the most affected, with 15 hospitals stopping delivery services, a nearly 38 percent drop during that period.
It’s a trend seen in rural areas across the country, including in neighboring Wisconsin.
The declining number of rural hospitals with operating birthing centers creates risks for pregnant women who have to travel hours to access labor and delivery services.
A recent University of Minnesota study identified a large jump in anxiety when hospitals in Grand Marais and Ely stopped delivering babies in 2015. Women who received prenatal care at local hospitals reported a tenfold increase in anxiety from 1990 to 2016, the study found. The lack of access to rural obstetrics care is also linked to a higher rate of preterm delivery and infant mortality.
North Shore Health Hospital in Grand Marais stopped offering planned deliveries in 2015 because the facility couldn’t afford to pay for the additional staff and equipment needed, as well as training to do an emergency cesarean section procedure. But the action stranded pregnant women in Grand Marais, who would have to drive over two hours to find a hospital with delivery services.
Kimber Wraalstad, North Shore’s administrator, said continuing to deliver babies without offering C-sections put the hospital at risk of a lawsuit should something go wrong. Building and staffing an operating room for deliveries would have cost $1 million more each year, Wraalstad said.
“It’s not that a decision like this comes easy,” she said.
Since fewer babies are born in rural areas, local doctors have a harder time maintaining their skills and handling complications, said Daniel Zismer, a former health system executive and professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
He said consolidating services like obstetrics makes economic and medical sense because it can reduce risks for patients.
“The bigger question for the sake of the public health is what can (rural hospitals and clinics) reasonably provide in this community in a high quality way, affordably,” Zismer said.
