PeaceHealth administration and Department of Mission, Theology and Ethics fail to substantively engage with Friends of the Birth Center
PeaceHealth has begun to respond but continues to fall far short of our community's demands for input into its decision to close the Birth Center. PeaceHealth COO Todd Salnas replied to our request for a meeting with PeaceHealth CEO Mary Kingston with a similar invitation to be heard only on the conditions determined by PeaceHealth administration.
Friends of the Birth Center also communicated this week with the PeaceHealth department of Mission, Theology and Ethics. We appealed to this department on the grounds that a sudden closure of the Birth Center stands in direct opposition to the values to which all PeaceHealth departments and employees are purported to adhere. Again, we received a reply that did not engage with the content of our letter or offer to communicate further with our organization.
PeaceHealth CEO obfuscates reason for closure, declines to authentically engage with Birth Center community
On May 20, Friends of the Birth Center received a reply from PeaceHealth CEO Mary Kingston in response to our request for a meeting to discuss the Birth Center. This reply invited one member of our Board to attend a meeting, on the condition that we limit our input to ways to "ensure that as we transition from the Birth Center to the integrated model of care at RiverBend we meet the full spectrum of birthing needs of our community and that our expectant mothers enjoy safe, satisfying and empowering childbirth experiences." Because, as members of the Birth Center community, we know that midwives are already integrated and providing low risk care at RiverBend, and that Birth Center clients already enjoy precisely these experiences under the care of midwives and staff, we declined to meet with PeaceHealth under this condition. Friends of the Birth Center is a consumer advocacy organization; we refuse to be used as a means by which PeaceHealth can purport to participate in authentic engagement with its patients even as it fails to address our concerns. Instead, we will continue to advocate for our community by demanding that PeaceHealth meet with us to discuss keeping the Birth Center open.
On May 23, PeaceHealth COO Todd Salnas also responded (via telephone) to our request for a meeting with administration. He asserted that PeaceHealth desires to convene with people who want to help PeaceHealth formulate a plan to incorporate midwifery services into the obstetrics model of care at RiverBend. It is clear to us that PeaceHealth has NO current plan other than to close the Birth Center. We were told that our board is only invited to a meeting if we limit our discussion to that plan; PeaceHealth is not willing to hear our concerns about the Birth Center’s closure, or our ideas about how it could continue to exist in its current form.
Financial unsustainability is the reason PeaceHealth continues to give for its decision to close the Birth Center. This rationale is disingenuous; we know that PeaceHealth was making plans to hire additional midwives and expand the Birth Center's services as recently as March 2019. The premise PeaceHealth offers for the Birth Center's "unsustainability" is furthermore based upon incorrect data (midwives delivered far more babies than the numbers PeaceHealth has stated) and fails to take into account the comprehensive care that has been provided by the Birth Center in over 3,000 clinic visits since July 2018. Please see our response to Mary Kingston, which details the many ways that the claim of financial unsustainability does not withstand scrutiny, here.
Women's Care recently decided to cease collaborating with Birth Center midwives and PeaceHealth seems to have decided to close the Birth Center instead of confronting this problem head-on, and working in collaboration with the Birth Center community to solve it. PeaceHealth has chosen to summarily close the Birth Center, thereby making its many invaluable services unavailable to women and families in our region. We continue to insist that PeaceHealth work to solve this problem by meeting with Friends of the Birth Center to discuss how to keep the Birth Center open.
Senior Vice President of Mission, Theology and Ethics declines to meaningfully engage with community’s concerns
On May 24, Friends of the Birth Center sent a thoroughly researched and carefully considered letter to the Board of Directors and others in the the PeaceHealth Department of Mission, Theology and Ethics, which you can see here. This letter was sent with twenty-one pages of testimony provided by birth center clients and can be seen here.The letter and testimonies detail the many concrete ways that eliminating the Birth Center without any input from the community it supports is a violation of PeaceHealth's statement of common values. Yet again, we urged PeaceHealth to respond to our specific concerns, and on May 28 we received a reply from Dianna Kielian, Senior Vice President of Mission, Theology and Ethics (available here) that did not engage with them in any way. Rather, it thanked us for sharing our "fond memories and special experiences," and reiterated the talking points with which we are now familiar.
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