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MAINE C elia geel was about halfway through her pregnancy when she heard the alarming news: The hospital in her hometown where she had expected to deliver her baby, Calais Regional Hospital, in May announced that it planned to close its labor and delivery department in 2018. Any unexpected deliv- eries would happen in the emergency department. The situation quickly got worse: Since the small rural hospital in Maine would no longer be in the business of bringing babies into the world, the hospital's only obstetrician found a new position else- where, moved away, and the unit actually closed early in August. Geel lost the OB doctor who had cared for her since the beginning of her pregnancy, had to find a new doctor, and now faced a 90-minute drive (that's in optimum traffic conditions) to Eastern Maine Medical Center. "It was nerve wracking," said Geel, 30. "It definitely made everything more stressful. She explained that when you live in a rural area like hers, you learn to think through your options in case bad traffic or weather shuts down roads. "In the back of my mind, I always had Calais. But my main stressor was that option wasn't there anymore." Geel ended up giving birth to a healthy baby in October at EMMC without much transportation or logistics drama. But with deep winter coming, other mothers might not be so lucky. Geel says that one of her pregnant friends, who is due in December, remarked that she wonders if she would have chosen to get pregnant if she had known that Calais would close. For Geel, the surrounding Calais community, and nurses who work at Calais Regional, the closure of the OB unit feels like just the first nail in a coffin that may seal the death of their small but critically-needed hospital, and even of their town. "Now we have no women's health physician in town," pointed out Geel. "They'll slowly take away more services and by then it will be too little too late. What would bring new younger families to this area if we don't have a full- service hospital?" To that end, residents like Geel teamed up with Maine State Nurses Association registered nurses at Calais and local elected officials to loudly protest the closure and any additional cuts. In addition to holding candlelight vigils and staging a number of well-attended protest actions in front of the facility, the group secured a July resolution by the city council of "no confidence" in the hospital board and hosted an August town hall on the implications of the closure. Now they are lobbying to pass a state bill, An Act to Protect Rural Maine Healthcare, spon- sored by Rep. Stephen Stanley and Maine House Assistant Majority Leader Jared Golden, that would require hospital corpo- rations to conduct impact studies and hold public hearings on proposed closures of major services. The Maine State Legislative Council in early December voted to consider the bill during emergency session. "Our community is already seeing the consequences of the decision by Calais Regional Hospital to close our obstetrics department a few months ago," said Maureen Hayward, RN and chief nurse steward at Calais. "Mothers have to choose between driving a long way over bad roads for their OB services, or driving for two hours on the highway. The bill we've submit- ted would make sure that, in the future, other rural towns won't have to deal with what we're dealing with in Calais right now." Calais pays almost $1 million annually to be run by Quorum Health Resources, a spin- off of the giant national hospital chain Community Health Systems (CHS), a corpo- ration known among nurses for buying up small, local hospitals and imposing steep corporate cutbacks on staffing, resources, and services. CHS has been cited numerous times by the National Labor Relations Board for unfair labor practices toward registered nurses, and a number of National Nurses United-represented facilities are battling the company over first contract fights. "People need to wake up and regain control," said Geel, who says she would like to see the hospital run by the Calais commu- nity for the Calais community. "If this hospi- tal closed, that would be a major loss." —Staff report O C T O B E R | N O V E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 5 Calais regional closes OB RNs and community wonder if whole hospital is next