PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Since Legacy’s Mt. Hood Birth Center closed three weeks ago they’ve been diverting pregnant patients to Randall Children’s Hospital, leaving staff overwhelmed and leading to more patients being diverted to other hospitals.
A nurse who works at Randall Children’s Hospital told KOIN 6 that the birth center closure has had a domino effect and has had a traumatic impact on staff and patients.
There is no timeline for when the birth center will reopen, but Legacy said it will happen within the next 90 days.
Legacy Mt Hood ER nurse Jenni Suarez said since Legacy Mt. Hood shut down maternity services the hospital’s ER staff has been in charge of taking care of pregnant women and that ER nurses received some training, but not enough.
“You know that it’s scary if ER nurses are worried about it, right?” Suarez said. “ER nurses are sort of the catchall, we do everything. I mean, we see some pretty traumatic things and delivering babies is not one of them. We are definitely not trained to do it, don’t have the knowledge to do it, the experience. And then just being really worried that we’re gonna have a situation where a patient would need an emergency c-section and (we’re) unable to do that. No anesthesiology on, you know, just no way to safely get a baby out and have the mom survive.”
Legacy closed the Mt. Hood Birth Center without approval from the Oregon Health Authority. The hospital applied for a waiver, asking OHA to grant permission for the closure.
However, OHA denied the request, expressing concerns about the patient’s safety.
The closure frustrated a couple of state lawmakers.
District 44 representative, and former nurse, Travis Nelson spoke out about the closure, sharing the impact that it was having on his constituents.
“Emanuel is probably the hospital that most of my constituents use and with services being shuffled to Emanual that could cause longer wait times for my constituents potentially,” Nelson said.
Representative Zach Hudson from District 49 shared that Legacy told him that the birthing center was shut down because of staffing issues and because it just wasn’t profitable.
“What Legacy shared with us is that they did not have the staffing that they would need to continue operating their birth center and that their birth center was not financially profitable,” Hudson said. “Shutting down the birthing center because of concerns related to profit, that’s just inexcusable to me.”
Hudson went on to say that Legacy should face consequences for closing the birth center and causing all the trouble.
“I think there should be consequences,” Hudson said. “OHA, if it’s able to institute a monetary penalty, there should institute a monetary penalty. And if that’s not something that they can do, as a legislature, we’ve got to take a careful look at requiring monetary penalties because we cannot have other hospitals or hospital systems making this type of move.”
OHA said Legacy Mt. Hood served more women in need of urgent maternity care than any other hospital in Legacy’s system and said a disproportionate percentage of those patients were non-English speakers.