A local grassroots coalition issued a letter Thursday criticizing the MaineHealth Lincoln Hospital board, which the group indicated had voted to recommend closing the facility’s birthing center.
MaineHealth officials refused to confirm whether the board had voted on the issue.
Les Fossel, a 16-year member of the Lincoln Hospital board who has been supportive of community effort to keep the maternity ward open, told the Portland Press Herald in June that he would resign if the board voted to recommend its closure.
When reached on Thursday, Fossel said: “After the board meeting was over, I immediately resigned.”
Fossel declined to comment further, saying he could not discuss board deliberations from the Thursday meeting.
Kathleen Taggersell, a MaineHealth spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday that “board deliberations and related discussions are confidential and will not be shared publicly. We are aware that the information may be circulating about the board’s discussions, and we will not confirm or comment on those reports.”
The recommendation is set to go before a regional board next week and the MaineHealth board would make the final decision on whether to close the birthing center, according to officials from the health system. The next MaineHealth board meeting is Aug. 6.
In a letter posted on social media Thursday, members of the Miles Delivers Action Coalition, the group advocating to keep the birthing center open, wrote: “To those who voted for closure: Our town will be worse off because you decided that there was no way to overcome solvable concerns.”
The letter said the coalition had support from thousands of community members, and that 50 MaineHealth healthcare professionals signed a different letter urging the board to keep the maternity ward open.
“We have heard from exactly zero who want it closed,” Thursday’s letter from the coalition said. “Yet the board chose closure anyway.”
Hospital officials have said that recruiting obstetricians and midwives to work at the rural hospital, which has low birth volumes, has been difficult. Lincoln Hospital has one part-time OB/GYN and two midwives, while a full staff would be four obstetricians and four midwives.
Two MaineHealth doctors who practice in Damariscotta said this week that Lincoln Hospital should try alternative staffing models to keep the birthing center open. Their suggestions included hiring family practice doctors who are trained to deliver babies or sharing staff between the three closest hospitals with birthing centers — Lincoln Hospital, Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick and Pen Bay Hospital in Rockport, which are all part of MaineHealth.
Leslie Wolf, one of the coalition’s leaders, said the group is going to keep trying to persuade the MaineHealth board to keep the birthing center open.
If it does close,Wolf, 33, said, “it’s the start of the end for young people like myself who saw themselves putting down roots here. It’s a rejection of young families.”
Maine has seen 11 hospitals shutter their maternity wards since 2015.