(BAKER CITY, Ore.) –Nurses, doctors, caregivers, community members and elected officials at the local, state and national level are all working overtime to save Baker County's only family birth center. On June 22, St. Alphonsus executives made the shocking announcement to permanently close the obstetrics department and birth center at Saint Alphonsus Medical Center - Baker City on July 31. 

Nurses at Saint Alphonsus Medical Center - Baker City are urging St. Alphonsus hospital administers to delay the closure and continue working with local nurses and health care workers, the Baker County Board of Commissioners, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley to find a way to continue providing safe, family-centered childbirth services at Baker County’s only hospital. Recent efforts by state and federal officials include official requests to provide St. Alphonsus with six federally-paid obstetrics nurses from the United State Public Health Service for six months. 

The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) represents frontline registered nurses and allied health care workers at St. Alphonsus - Baker City and nurses at St. Alphonsus - Ontario. 

“Oregon’s elected leaders are doing everything in their power to save Baker County’s only birth center. St. Alphonsus and Trinity Health officials must seriously consider these aid offers and make good faith efforts to work with Oregon’s elected leaders and find a way to continue providing much-needed maternity services in Eastern Oregon. This includes accepting outside assistance and offering 6-month or longer extensions to its current birth center caregivers to prevent them from leaving the community in search of work. 

St. Alphonsus gave this community a months’ notice before closing a 100-year old institution. Nurses, community advocates and elected leaders are moving mountains but we need more time to create a safe, long-term solution.

Every Oregonian deserves a safe and healthy start to life. Closing the birth center now will put lives at risk. Eastern Oregon families deserve access to safe, high-quality maternity care. We need St. Alphonsus executives to partner with elected officials offering aid and with nurses and caregivers by extending contracts to keep the birth center open while we all work towards a long-term solution,” said ONA spokesperson Kevin Mealy. 

St. Alphonsus' abrupt closure of the birth center has sparked near-universal opposition from local doctors, families and the hospital’s own foundation and community advisory boards. Both hospital boards “were reassured multiple times that the OB department was not going to be closed” in recent months and hospital president Dina Ellwanger cited the birth center as one of the health system’s bright spots in October 2022.  

St. Alphonsus executives also chose to close the intensive care unit (ICU) at St. Alphonsus Medical Center - Baker City earlier this year. In both the birth center and ICU closures, the hospital cited a combination of staffing shortages, lower patient projections and financial trends. St. Alphonsus is owned by Trinity Health, the 5th largest health care system in the country with $21.5 billion in annual operating revenue.

The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) is the state’s largest and most influential nursing organization. We are a professional association and labor union which represents more than 16,000 nurses and allied health workers throughout the state. ONA’s mission is to advocate for nursing, quality health care and healthy communities. For more information visit: www.OregonRN.org.

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