Brattleboro Memorial Hospital has reversed its decision to close its birthing center at the end of the year, offering a reprieve for southeastern Vermont’s last hospital-based labor and delivery unit.  A press release from the hospital said its board had “affirmed its commitment” to conti nuing obstetric and birthing services. Asked Friday whether that meant the board had formally reversed its June decision to close the center, a hospital spokesperson told Seven Days that “the Board has voted to continue obstetric and birthing services, including [Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s] Birthing Center.” The decision reverses the board’s June vote to end labor and delivery services as the financially struggling hospital sought to cut costs.  “The Board believes strongly that access to local maternity care is essential to the health and well-being of our community,” said Chloe Learey, chair of the hospital’s board of directors. The reversal preserves a local option for pregnant patients in Windham County at a time when hospital-based maternity care is disappearing across the state. Springfield Hospital stopped delivering babies in 2019, and Copley Hospital in Morrisville closed its birthing center last year. Had Brattleboro followed through with its planned closure by December 31, both Windham and Windsor counties would have been left without hospital-based labor and delivery services.  But keeping the Brattleboro center open will require the hospital to solve the same financial problems that prompted its board to vote for closure less than three months ago. Brattleboro Memorial Hospital reported a $15.8 million operating loss in fiscal year 2025. The birthing center and its obstetrics and gynecology clinic have also been major money losers, posting a combined $3.8 million loss in calendar year 2025, according to a filing made last month to the Green Mountain Care Board. At the time of the filing, the hospital projected those services would lose $5.2 million in the upcoming fiscal year. Administrators now say the hospital’s overall finances are improving. After initially budgeting for a $14.5 million operating loss this fiscal year, the hospital now expects to lose roughly $9.5 million. A hospital spokesperson told Seven Days that administrators have developed a plan identifying “the financial, operational and philanthropic factors” necessary to sustain obstetric and birthing services.  The board is pursuing operational changes that include staffing adjustments, increasing appointment availability, improving billing practices and attracting more patients to deliver at the hospital. Updated projections for the current fiscal year anticipate more births than previously expected, according to the hospital’s announcement.  The new course comes shortly after the hospital received approval for funding through Vermont’s Rural Health Transformation Program, a five-year federal initiative. The board indicated the program could help the hospital explore new models for providing maternity care in southern Vermont. A hospital spokesperson said officials do not yet know how much funding they will receive.  The board’s decision follows months of public pressure from hospital employees and community members who argued that closing the center would force pregnant patients to travel farther for care. Brattleboro town officials briefly considered asking voters to approve a one-time property tax assessment to support the center. The selectboard dropped that idea in July.  The fight in Brattleboro to save its birthing center has unfolded amid growing concern about access to maternity care across Vermont. As Seven Days reported in a cover story this week, nearly one in three Vermonters giving birth already lives outside a widely recommended 30-minute drive to hospital-based obstetric care. Rural hospitals nationwide have increasingly shuttered obstetric units as declining birth rates, workforce shortages and reimbursement rates that fail to cover the high fixed costs of round-the-clock maternity care strain their finances. For the time being, Brattleboro’s birthing center remains fully operational, and the board says it intends to keep it that way. “Now we need to turn that commitment into action,” board chair Learey said. The post Brattleboro Memorial Hospital Reverses Plan to Close Birthing Center appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less