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My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

If you want to know which hospitals truly believe in rural health care and serving their local communities, look at which ones most tenaciously hang on to labor and delivery services in the face of growing challenges.

Around here, it is certainly United Hospital District (UHD) in Blue Earth.

With Mayo’s recently announced closure of labor and delivery services in Fairmont, UHD is now the only hospital that delivers babies between Worthington and Austin, which are 135 miles apart on I-90. North to south, it’s the only hospital that offers birth services between Mankato and Algona, Iowa, which are 90 miles apart.

UHD is the last hospital left filling an enormous baby delivery desert that Mayo has created in this part of the state.

Mayo closed Albert Lea’s Baby Place in 2019. It closed St. James OB in about 2008 and Waseca’s baby delivery in about 2004.

For expectant mothers in western Freeborn County, Blue Earth is closer than driving to Austin.

Keeping UHD open is more important than ever, and it is rising to meet the challenge. While Mayo claims that providers don’t want to work in rural Minnesota and thus it can’t fill openings and has to withdraw vital services, UHD is adding OB/GYN providers to meet additional demand as many women would prefer not to drive all the way to Mankato or Austin for births. UHD somehow is managing to do this without the immense financial resources and worldwide prestige of Mayo.

One lesson to draw from UHD’s plucky commitment to local women is that community leaders and county boards should not take Mayo’s rationale for departure of services at face value. An independent assessment is necessary, and a compelling counter-narrative will likely come to light.

I have received the majority of my OB-GYN care at UHD in Blue Earth since 2018, and its commitment to women’s health in our area affirms my decision. I was hoping that UHD would open a clinic in Albert Lea this year, but Mayo’s anticipated closure of Fairmont’s birth unit was a big change for which UHD likely had to prepare itself. UHD is versatile but not supernatural. It is no slouch, but it’s not working with a third quarter operating margin of $55 million like Mayo reported last week.

Beyond the health care sector, also recognize other services and locally-owned small businesses that are committed to rural areas. Go there, shop there, eat there, contract there, etc. Do it for the same reason that you water your garden. That money is much more likely to stay local and build and repair our communities. Despite private equity firms chopping up mainstays like Herberger’s and Shopko, I can still find almost all of what I need without leaving Albert Lea or its surrounding small towns.

We are viable if we keep investing in ourselves.

It is also really important to welcome new people. Consider that in 2017, 20% of births in Minnesota were to women born in other countries. The old waves of immigration to Freeborn County will not sustain us, and new immigration is our future. If we can’t change and adapt, we will stagnate and decline. Let’s be a place that can adapt, even when it’s hard and looks different than what we once imagined our future would be.

We have a lot to be thankful for. Let’s be stalwart, not stagnant. Let’s be plucky, not plucked. We need to believe in each other and in our small communities. Happy Thanksgiving.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.