Copley Hospital in Morrisville is closing its birthing center, citing unsustainable long-term costs and declining birth rates across the region. The hospital trustees’ decision will leave Lamoille County without a place to give birth.
Reimbursement rates for labor and delivery units are typically lower than the cost of providing care across the country, and Copley leaders said the hospital has been losing over $15,000 per birth. In a statement from earlier this year, the hospital said a vaginal birth at Copley cost less than half the price of the same service at the state’s largest hospital, the University of Vermont Medical Center.
“I know everyone on the Board wishes we could keep it open,” board member Kathy Demars said in the hospital press release.
Lamoille County is truly going to become a birth desert.April Vanderveer, certified nurse midwife at Copley
For months, community members and health care workers have shared concerns about the potential closure of the labor and delivery unit at Copley, which serves between 150 and 200 births per year.
“Even the home birth midwives are like, we’re not going to do home births here because there is no safe hospital to transfer to,” said April Vanderveer, a midwife at Copley. “Lamoille County is truly going to become a birth desert.”
In a statement, the Agency of Human Services said "Copley has clearly made a thoughtful, if extremely difficult decision, in the interest of maintaining financial sustainability and access to high quality patient care overall."
After years of losses, the hospital reported making $1.4 million last year, and is projected to be profitable this year, even if the birthing center were to stay open.
Hospital officials have not said whether they plan to provide obstetrics or pediatric coverage in the emergency department if someone comes into the emergency room in labor, with pregnancy complications, or with an obstetrics emergency.
“In other places where OB [obstetrics] units have closed down, it’s just left up to the ER [emergency room] providers,” Vanderveer said.
In an undated letter to the hospital board, emergency department staff said they have limited training in obstetrical deliveries and "worry about adverse outcomes and mortality, should it fall to us to care for these patients."
In a press release, the hospital said the women’s center at the hospital would remain open for screenings, contraceptives, family planning, and menopause care. They also said patients could access prenatal care – health care during pregnancy — and postpartum care, after childbirth.
But staff members at the birthing center have expressed doubts about that possibility, if obstetrics providers are not delivering babies.
“I’m not sure what that looks like,” Vanderveer said.
Some of the staff in the birthing center have said they plan to leave the hospital, like Steffany Mosley, an obstetrics nurse, who has worked at Copley for 30 years.
“We were told not to stay for the unit — if you find a job, take it,” she said.
“I am evidently not valued, and the work that I do is not valued.”
On Monday morning, she was in the emergency room at Copley with a family member, who had an ovarian cyst. She doesn’t think that they will be able to get care for an emergency like that once the birthing center closes.
“In the future, we won't have obstetric call here,” she said. “So we're going to have to go to UVM [University of Vermont] or to CVMC [Central Vermont Medical Center] for this.”
Copley officials said they would announce a formal closing date for the birthing center in the coming weeks.
