Shutdown of Burdett Birth Center would impoverish Troy

The outsized meaning of maternity wards may help to explain why the planned closure of the Burdett Birthing Center at Troy’s Samaritan Hospital has elicited so much heartbreak and outrage. (Unsplash photo)

TROY — When I was a teenager, I worked in the kitchen at our local hospital, which on many days meant delivering trays of food to patients in all corners of the building. 

I remember the frightened faces of families in the ICU and the eerie hush of the psychiatric ward. The palliative care unit was a depressing reminder of what age does to the human body, while the emergency room often offered grim examples of the damage humans do to their own bodies. The hospital, in short, was not where its patients wanted to be.

The maternity floor was the exception.

Everything about that part of the building was different — the mood, the colors, the sounds. Crying newborns! The ward was, generally speaking, the hospital’s happy place. Its presence lifted the entire building — and the community beyond the hospital’s walls. It was hope. 

The outsized meaning of maternity wards may help to explain why the planned closure of the Burdett Birthing Center at Troy’s Samaritan Hospital has elicited so much heartbreak and outrage. St. Peter’s Health Partners, which owns Samaritan, could probably shutter most any other part of the hospital without generating so much pushback, but the place where children are born? That’s something people will fight for. 

Which is understandable, of course. If there is no place for babies to be born in your town or county, which will be the case for Rensselaer County if Burdett shutters, that suggests something is wrong, that the vitality of your community isn’t what it should be. It feels like the waning of optimism and promise. 

As Pope Francis has put it: “A society that does not welcome life stops living. Children are the hope that make a people reborn.”

I quote the pope here in part because St. Peter’s is a Catholic institution dedicated to serving the Gospel. Nevertheless, its case for closing the center is merely financial. Burdett is plenty busy but nevertheless loses about $2.3 million annually. And given the financial crunch facing the broader St. Peter’s system, officials want to save money by consolidating with the maternity ward at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany. 

“There’s not many areas we look at where we have the opportunity to reduce the number on the bottom line and still provide the service,” Dr. Steven Hanks, head of the health network, said in a meeting last week with the Times Union editorial board. 

Financial arguments haven’t persuaded the plan’s many critics, which, again, is understandable. For one thing, few of us want to consider something as miraculous and spiritual as the birth of a baby in purely fiscal terms. When we’re talking about something so wonderful and glorious, mentioning grubby old dollars and cents feels jarring. 

For another, Burdett is described by its supporters as a special place. The center serves a significant number of low-income patients, and its relatively low C-section rate suggests an atypical willingness to allow women to deliver at a more natural pace. In contrast to a medical establishment primed for intervention and eager for efficiency, Burdett is credited with emphasizing informed consent and including midwives in the process.

Alas, you need not be a bean counter to suspect that Burdett’s patience and restraint are adding to its financial losses, which may make targeting its culture more tempting. You don’t have to be a soothsayer to see that forcing Rensselaer County women to travel to Albany will be a significant inconvenience, at best, and potentially a risk to maternal health.

Hanks disputes that, noting that staffing and other limitations at Burdett already force the center to transfer roughly 20 percent of its patients to other hospitals. If anything, he says, shuttering Burdett will be beneficial to the health of its expectant mothers. 

If you doubt that claim, well, you’re not alone. Hanks is probably on stronger ground when he argues that eliminating Burdett’s losses is key to strengthening the overall health of St. Peter’s, allowing the non-profit’s broader mission to flourish. He outlined how the system is forced to balance a shrinking number of medical profit centers against needed services that will always lose money. 

“This is a canary in the coal mine,” Hanks said of the planned Burdett shutdown, which still requires state approval. “These trends are going to continue and they’re continuing to escalate.”

It would be easier to castigate St. Peter’s if hospitals all around the country, including the one where I once worked, weren’t making the same decision. That’s leading to a rapid decline in maternity wards and points to a profound and much broader problem. To my mind, something is fundamentally wrong with a medical system that sees childbirth largely as a financial burden.  

Closing Burdett wouldn’t mean the end of hope in Troy. But the move would certainly diminish it. 

Chris Churchill is a columnist for the Albany Times Union and this column first appeared on that paper's website on July 11. He has graciously allowed The Evangelist to reprint this column.