City leaders in Fosston, Minn., are prepared to take back control of their hospital if Essentia Health follows through on plans to permanently end scheduled baby deliveries.
Mayor Jim Offerdahl said the loss of baby deliveries would be profound for an isolated community on the northern border of the White Earth Reservation, but he has deeper concerns. The shutdown of labor and delivery units in small hospitals across Minnesota has led to an erosion of other medical services. In Fosston, Essentia recently stopped providing dermatology and started sending blood samples out of town for blood sugar tests, delaying results, Offerdahl said.
“Maybe some of these large health care organizations will pay attention and maybe rethink what they are doing,” he said.
The dispute has been simmering since June 2022, when Duluth-based Essentia announced that it was suspending baby deliveries at the Fosston hospital due to a lack of doctors and nurses with training and experience in obstetrics.
Essentia considered the move temporary at the time. The community of 1,400 people between Crookston and Bemidji responded with “We Are Fosston” T-shirts and events to try and make their community enticing to new doctors and nurses. But the health system eventually decided to make the move permanent, and filed a required notice of the change earlier this year with the state of Minnesota.
Essentia is continuing prenatal care locally but scheduling births at its hospital in Detroit Lakes, 65 miles south of Fosston. The regional hospital is better prepared to respond to unexpected complications during labor and to switch within minutes to an emergency surgical delivery if needed, said Dr. Stefanie Gefroh, an associate chief medical officer for Essentia Health’s western Minnesota market.
Deaths from these complications are twice as likely in hospitals with low birth numbers, Gefroh said Tuesday during a public hearing on the closure. “These complications do happen and must be at the forefront of our planning as we consider acceptable labor and delivery practices.”
The Chartis Center for Rural Health counted 22 hospitals in Minnesota that stopped scheduling baby deliveries from 2011 through 2021. Mayo Clinic’s hospital in New Prague is the latest, announcing that it will stop providing that service on Feb. 9 after aggressive recruitment efforts failed to secure new specialists to the hospital. A hearing on that closure is set for Feb. 6.