Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Baker City has been at its current location, 3325 Pocahontas Road, since 1970. The Boise-based health system on Thursday, June 22, 2023, announced the Baker City hospital’s birth center would shut down at the end of July.

BAKER CITY — Two boards associated with Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Baker City are “unanimously and adamantly opposed” to the pending closure of the birth center at the Baker City hospital and will be meeting with hospital officials next week.

In a statement, the Baker City Hospital Foundation Board and the Baker City Hospital Community Advisory Board stated that on their request, their members will meet Monday, July 3, in Baker City with Saint Alphonsus Health System officials including CEO Odette Bolano and Dina Ellwanger, president of the Baker City and Ontario hospitals.

Neither board has the authority to override decisions made by Saint Alphonsus officials.

Saint Alphonsus announced June 22 that the birth center at the Baker City hospital will close July 30.

Saint Alphonsus Health System, which includes hospitals in Baker City, Ontario, Nampa and Boise, is owned by Trinity Health of Michigan, a nonprofit Catholic health system that operates 92 hospitals in 22 states.

Saint Alphonsus cited a decline in the number of babies delivered there — from 128 in 2020 to a projected 75 this year — as well as the difficulty in employing enough nurses in the obstetrics department as the reasons for the closure.

The two hospital boards’ statement:

• “The Baker City Hospital Foundation Board and the Baker City Hospital Community Advisory Board are unanimously and adamantly opposed to the recent announcement of the closure of the OB department at the Baker City Hospital.”

• “Neither Board was consulted nor provided any opportunity to provide input or potential solutions.”

• “Over the past few months, both boards were reassured multiple times that the OB department was not going to be closed.”

• “On June 25th Both Boards requested an in person meeting with SAHS leadership to discuss the closure of the OB department, reconsideration of that decision, ongoing staffing issues, and discuss potential solutions to these issues that will benefit our local Baker County community.”

• “This request was accepted and an in person meeting will take place on July 3rd in Baker City. Attending from Saint Alphonsus will be: Odette Bolano, CEO of SAHS. Mike Ballantyne, SAHS Board Chair. Dina Ellwanger, President of Eastern Oregon SAHS.”

The letter was signed by Hospital Community Advisory Board chairman Kirk Jacobson and members Allison Kuehl, Jeana Phillips, Teresa McQuisten, Carol Kitch and Matt Baldwin, along with Hospital Foundation Board chair Evan Kaseberg and members Jason Yencopal, Logan Mitchell and Angela Robb.

Both Kaseberg and Jacobson, chairs of the boards, declined to comment further.

Shelly Cutler, Eastern Oregon senior specialist for marketing and communications for Saint Alphonsus, said hospital officials didn’t have any comment on the boards’ statement.

On Friday, June 23, Cutler said, in regard to the staffing shortages in the birth center that Saint Alphonsus mentioned in its announcement, that “staffing is a dynamic situation that is always changing,” and that although the Baker City hospital’s obstetrics department was fully staffed last fall, subsequent resignations created vacancies.

The closure of the birth center will affect 12 current employees, Cutler said — four full-time, four part-time and four who work as needed.

There are four current vacancies for full-time nurses in the birth center, she said.

Cutler also addressed downward trends in the hospital’s financial situation.

According to Oregon Health Authority figures, the hospital’s total revenue dipped by 12.7% in 2022 compared to the previous year, from $40,832,000 in 2021 to $35,632,000 in 2022, and its “bad debt” — money that patients were billed but did not pay — was the highest in nearly a decade in 2022, at $1,217,000. That was the biggest amount of bad debt since 2013, when it was $1,413,000. The highest annual figure in the past 15 years was $2,603,000, in 2009.

Cutler said several factors contributed to those trends, including federal COVID aid the hospital received in 2021 but not in 2022.

The hospital’s net patient revenue declined in 2022 due to fewer surgical procedures as well as the decline in deliveries at the birth center, she said, adding that higher costs for labor and materials also contributed to the negative operating margin.

Shane Alderson, chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, had more than just a professional interest when Saint Alphonsus Medical Center announced Thursday, June 22, that it planned to close the birth center at the Baker City hospital on July 30.

Besides being the only full-time county commissioner, a position to which he was elected last November, Alderson said his wife, Alisha, is expecting their second child in September.

And it’s a high-risk pregnancy, Shane Alderson said.

So even as he works to gather information about the situation and set up meetings with hospital officials, Alderson has a profound personal stake in the outcome.

“I hope that we can work with St. Al’s and come up with a solution,” Alderson said June 26.

He said he was bothered that the hospital’s announcement came without warning.

“I am disappointed with the way they went about this,” he said. “In the past they have been good community partners. Now I don’t think that they are.”

He said it appears that the hospital, which is owned by Trinity Health of Michigan, is prioritizing “dollars over services.”

Alderson said he thought it was fortunate the hospital’s announcement came just three days before Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, had scheduled a town hall in Baker City.

The birth center closure was the main topic of the event, at which Alderson introduced Wyden and chose, by random draw, the people who posed questions to the senator.

Alderson said he noted the tears in the eyes of some of the audience members.

He said the local doctors and nurses who treat pregnant woman have “given just fantastic care” to community members over the years.

Alderson has enlisted help from Mark Bennett, the longtime Baker County commissioner who retired at the end of 2022, to try to gather information about the pending closure of the birth center.

Bennett said on Monday that he has talked with staff from Wyden’s and Congressman Cliff Bentz’s offices about the situation and potentially scheduling a local meeting.

— Jayson Jacoby