Fosston Frustrated with Essentia Health Plan to End OB Services at Hospital

Fosston held a meeting on Tuesday, March 5 to discuss further updates to Essentia Health’s plan to end OB services in the city.

In June of 2022, Essentia Health in Fosston informed the city that they would be pausing labor and delivery services at the hospital. Now, after trying to work with Essentia Health to keeping those services intact, the city of Fosston believes Essentia wasn’t being completely honest with them.

The city of Fosston is known as a central hub for medical services across northwest Minnesota. So when they became aware that Essentia Health was planning to end labor services, the city tried to take immediate action.

“We came alongside Essentia and said, ‘What can we do? This is a community that gets things done, so let us help you. If it’s nurses you need, we’ll help you hire them. If it’s doctors, we can recruit too,'” said Fosston City Administrator Cassie Heide. “And we did that for a year with no success. Essentia had goal posts and we would meet them, and they would move [them].”

Minnesota state statute says that if a hospital plans to change any services it provides, the hospital has 120 days to notify the city. Essentia waited 600 days to inform the city of Fosston.

“That’s been the challenge, is that we have a legal agreement that one party’s just not holding up their end of the bargain, and we’re seeking our remedy for that,” said Heide.

On Tuesday, Fosston hosted a special meeting to discuss the future of labor and delivery services. Many of the attendees happened to be employees of Essentia, who were concerned about their employment status during this legal battle.

“You know, it’s really unfortunate that the staff feels, you know, left in the dark and scared about their future,” Heide admitted. “And these are the people that are in our community that we go to church with, we raise our children with. And we want these people to feel as best they can in this really uncertain time.”

The closest cities to Fosston with labor services are in Fargo and Detroit Lakes, both over an hour away (and the trip being nearly two hours to Fargo.) That’s a long time for someone in labor having to wait or possibly drive themselves to deliver a baby.

“Geographically, that service is absolutely needed for our residents,” asserted Heide. “We don’t think it’s appropriate for a woman to drive 70-plus miles down a two-lane highway to Detroit Lakes when historically we have done a fantastic job of delivering babies here.”

Fosston Mayor Jim Offerdahl says the COO of Essentia West was at the meeting on Tuesday, but he did not comment to any current employees in attendance. Essentia officials declined comment with Lakeland News on camera.

Arbitration between Fosston and Essentia is scheduled for July 8-11.