100+ Nurses, Community Protest Mount Desert Island Hospital Obstetrics Department Closure

PHOTO: Nurses & community members demonstrate in Bar Harbor Thursday.

Local community members joined more than 100 nurses on Thursday in Bar Harbor to protest the closure of Mount Desert Island Hospital’s (MDIH) obstetrics department. Nurses and community members began their protest at Bar Harbor’s Village Green, followed by a march to MDIH. Protesters lined Main Street, chanting and waving signs calling on the hospital to cancel the closure of the obstetrics (OB) unit.

“Who is going to hold these private hospitals accountable for making decisions that will eventually kill people?” asked Erin Oberson, a per diem RN in the obstetrics department at MDIH. “You cannot expect to end vital services, especially in rural Maine communities, without risking people dying as a result of lack of access to care. We will hold the MDIH administration responsible for these terrible adverse outcomes, and our governor and legislature as well, for failing to protect families and babies when we so clearly have a maternal health care crisis on our hands.”

The protest, which drew nurses and MSNA members from across the state, followed a standing-room only community meeting on March 30, immediately following the hospital’s announcement of the OB closure. Since this community meeting, where dozens of people shared their opposition to the closure, more than 1,100 people have signed a public petition demanding that MDIH reverse its shortsighted decision. MDIH’s management, led by CEO Chrissi Maguire, did not consult with community members or the bedside nurses who care for the hospitals’ patients before announcing the obstetrics department would close on July 1.

“Maine’s hospitals are failing Maine’s people,” said Emily Wright, RN who works in the MDIH OB department. “In the short span of a few years, so many maternal services departments across Maine have closed, leaving families stranded and without the care they need. This is not a sustainable model of health care. How can you build a community if there is nowhere for people to have babies?”

The closure of the OB department in Bar Harbor follows several other maternal services departments in recent years across the state, including York Hospital, Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent, Calais Community Hospital, and Downeast Community Hospital in Machias. Houlton Regional announced the closure of its labor and delivery department just after Bar Harbor announced its own closure.