TROY, N.Y. \u2014 Like many residents of this aging industrial city on the Hudson River, Starletta Washington was stunned when she heard Troy\u2019s last remaining hospital planned to close its birthing center.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was devastating,\u201d said Washington, who heads the local YWCA. Washington was born at the hospital and had her children there. She couldn\u2019t believe families would now have to get to a hospital half an hour away or face the prospect of an emergency delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody else was going to be born in the city of Troy unless they were born on a city bus, in the back of a cab, or, disgustingly, on the side of the street?\u201d Washington said. \u201cBlew my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Troy wasn\u2019t the first community to face this prospect. Since 2010, hospitals have closed hundreds of maternity units<\/a> as cities and towns shrink and hospitals consolidate into larger systems.<\/p>\n Troy found a more hopeful ending.<\/p>\n Elected officials from both major parties joined patient advocates, mothers, midwives, doulas, and community leaders like Washington to challenge Trinity Health, the large Catholic health system that owns Troy\u2019s hospital and birthing center. The campaign even united Planned Parenthood and the Catholic diocese<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether you were Republican or Democrat, or if you didn\u2019t vote, it literally brought everyone together,\u201d said Carmella Mantello, the city\u2019s Republican mayor. \u201cEveryone just said, \u2018We can\u2019t let this happen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tCarmella Mantello, the Republican mayor of Troy, New York, says even nonprofit hospitals seem to have become more corporate. \u201cThe whole hospital scene has changed,\u201d she says.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Hannah Norman\/KFF Health News)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tStarletta Washington, who heads the YWCA in Troy, was born at the hospital where Burdett Birth Center is located. Like many in the community, she says she was blindsided by Trinity Health\u2019s plan to close the center.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Hannah Norman\/KFF Health News)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Throughout the country, healthcare remains a flash point as politicians square off ahead of November\u2019s elections. But in many places, Americans are also quietly finding common ground.<\/p>\n In this small city, residents were brought together by frustration over large, corporate health systems that can seem to put profits over patients. And they resolved to work together to keep critical medical services in their community.<\/p>\n A Community<\/strong> Institution<\/strong><\/p>\n Babies have been delivered at Samaritan Hospital on a hill above Troy since this city\u2019s once bustling factories produced most of America\u2019s shirt collars a century ago.<\/p>\n More recently, Samaritan\u2019s Burdett Birth Center had become a model for patient-focused care. Midwives and doulas work alongside OB-GYNs and support mothers who want to avoid a delivery by cesarean section unless necessary.<\/p>\n Patient safety advocates have pushed for years to reduce surgical deliveries, which can lead to complications. At Burdett, only about a quarter of newborns are delivered by C-section, compared with about a third statewide, according to 2025 hospital data. Burdett also had fewer preterm births and fewer babies with low birth weights.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t go anywhere else,\u201d said Lidia Zambrano-Madera, who gave birth to both her children at Burdett with the help of a midwife.<\/p>\n Lidia Zambrano-Madera, a Troy resident, gave birth to both her children at the Burdett Birth Center with the help of a midwife. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t go anywhere else,\u201d she says. (Jayana Espinoza)<\/p>\n For Zambrano-Madera, who recently opened a children\u2019s play center in Troy, Burdett offered another advantage: It was just five minutes from home.<\/p>\n But three years ago, Trinity Health, a multibillion-dollar Michigan-based hospital system, said the birth center was losing money and would close. Families from Troy and surrounding Rensselaer County would have to deliver at another Trinity hospital in Albany, up to a half-hour\u2019s drive away. The hospitals are branded under St. Peter\u2019s Health Partners in the Albany region.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been frantic about trying not to cut the care at the bedside,\u201d said Steven Hanks, a physician who oversees Trinity hospitals in New York and New England. \u201cBut, you know, you get to a point where you can only consolidate so much. You can only spread people so thin, and then you have to start taking harder looks at your actual services.\u201d<\/p>\n Corporate Backlash<\/strong><\/p>\n Trinity\u2019s plans \u2014 news of which broke in a local newspaper<\/a> \u2014 came without warning, surprising the obstetrical staff and community leaders. They set off a firestorm.<\/p>\n Within days, midwives, mothers, community leaders, and politicians held a rally at the YWCA in downtown Troy. Others would follow. Volunteers led by doulas and midwives made T-shirts and handed out pink \u201cSave Burdett\u201d signs at the local farmers market.<\/p>\n Activists were outraged that the hospital hadn\u2019t adequately assessed the impact of the closure, particularly on low-income families. They conducted a community survey that found 1 in 4 Troy residents didn\u2019t have access to a car and would have trouble getting to Albany.<\/p>\n The campaign drew on deep connections that many residents had to Burdett. \u201cThey realized what a gem Burdett is, and what a great community service they provide,\u201d said Jessica Hayek, a doula and birth educator who helped lead the campaign.<\/p>\n Jessica Hayek, a doula and birth educator, helped lead the campaign to stop Trinity Health from closing the Burdett Birth Center. She says Michigan-based Trinity didn\u2019t appreciate how important the center was to the Troy community. (Hannah Norman\/KFF Health News)<\/p>\n Hayek and others also tapped into deep-seated frustration with Trinity, a healthcare behemoth that operates 91 hospitals<\/a> and last year recorded more than $25 billion in revenue and a healthy operating margin that topped 5%.<\/p>\n \u201cTrinity Health is in the Midwest, and they are not in the community,\u201d Hayek said. \u201cSo when you\u2019re looking at just the numbers from an office in the Midwest somewhere, they\u2019re not looking at the benefit that this place has on the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Hayek describes herself as a liberal Democrat. But Trinity\u2019s focus on its bottom line also irked many Republicans, including Mantello, who was the City Council president at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole hospital scene has changed,\u201d Mantello said. \u201cIt was very personable. You had nurses and doctors who were able to give more care and spend more time with patients.\u201d Now, by contrast, many hospitals have what she described as a \u201cmore corporate type of atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the Catholic bishop decried the planned closure of the birthing center as out of step with the values of his faith and the hospital system\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing is more central to the Catholic healthcare mission than supporting life and all those who bring it into the world,\u201d Bishop Edward Scharfenberger said after Trinity announced the closure plan. Scharfenberger has since retired.<\/p>\n A Bipartisan Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite the backlash, Trinity Health executives for months insisted they had no choice. The system even sued the state to push through the closure.<\/p>\n Ultimately, though, powerful state officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, joined the fight to save the birthing center, launching an investigation into the proposed closure and hosting a daylong hearing in Troy.<\/p>\n State Assembly member John T. McDonald III, a Democrat who represents Troy, worked with Republican elected officials, including the county executive and the state senator representing Troy, to secure $5 million in state funding to help keep Burdett open.<\/p>\n \u200a\u201cYou had a Democrat and a bunch of Republicans all working together on the same issue,\u201d McDonald said, \u201cbecause, at the end of the day, our job is to listen to what the public has to say.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tCommunity leaders, politicians, midwives, doulas, and families from Troy rallied for months to stop the Burdett Birth Center from closing, including at the state Capitol in Albany.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Katherine Bruno\/Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tCommunity volunteers in Troy celebrated the success of their campaign to save the Burdett Birth Center by adding a yellow tag to the pink protest signs.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Hannah Norman\/KFF Health News)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nearly a year after announcing the closure, Trinity reversed itself and said Burdett would remain open.<\/p>\n Lois Uttley, a New York City-based researcher and activist who has worked with communities facing hospital consolidation, said Troy\u2019s success reflects a growing bipartisan suspicion of corporate healthcare organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe executives of these health systems will tell the community that joining a big health system will be good, that the quality of care will improve, that efficiencies will mean they can keep the costs low,\u201d Uttley said. \u201cBut what I have seen over the last 30 years of work is that those promises often are broken.\u201d<\/p>\n As hospitals close or downsize, she said, communities are catching on. \u201cThey\u2019re becoming more skeptical.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s another, more hopeful lesson in Troy\u2019s success, said McDonald, the state lawmaker.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we take down our swords,\u201d he said, \u201cand put out our arms, maybe we can get something done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TROY, N.Y. \u2014 Like many residents of this aging industrial city on the Hudson River, Starletta Washington was stunned when she heard Troy\u2019s last remaining hospital planned to close its birthing center. \u201cIt was devastating,\u201d said Washington, who heads the local YWCA. Washington was born at the hospital and had her children there. She couldn\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}