Modern medicine is wonderful – sometimes.

The white-coated boys and girls with big brains have produced stuff our grandparents would have deemed miracles.

Look at the record.

Today’s docs replace hips and knees and, yes, hearts, like I used to change spark plugs in an old hand-me-down Oldsmobile coupe.

Today's big Pharma has invented a little blue pill that makes old guys feel and perform like they did when they were young. And they are marketing a magical compound that makes fat guys and fat gals slim.

Inside the labs of big Pharma and universities, medical nerds huddle over topics like RNA and CRISPR, splicing our DNA to find cures to ancient ailments. Some cancers are now controlled, while others are cured. Medical science prides itself on its ability to solve tough problems.

Last week, our local hospital faced up to a tough problem threatening mothers and their babies. And they threw in the towel.

Officials from LincolnHealth, an arm of MaineHealth, the corporation that runs the Damariscotta hospital once known as Miles Memorial, told us they are considering closing their maternal labor and delivery services.

The possible closing of those units is not unique to Lincoln County. In recent months, 11 of Maine’s rural hospitals have shuttered their birthing services, forcing mothers to drive long distances to deliver.

Who doesn’t love new mothers and newborns? Why would the Miles brass even think about closing those units?

Like most sticky problems, it is complicated, very complicated, with no easy solutions.

For the last few years, Miles recorded about 130 births per year, about one baby born every three days.
There are many reasons for this. For instance, the nation’s demographics are changing as fewer women of childbearing age choose motherhood, and we live in an older community.

So, hospital officials say they have fewer birthing mothers as customers. But they still must maintain costly labor and delivery departments with skilled caring docs, nurses, aides, midwives and the usual assortment of caring folk and equipment. 

Medical lore says those departments are money losers, but they are maintained because they have become the hospital’s loss leaders, attracting long-term customers.

If their patients (customers) are happy with the birthing experience, they are likely to use that hospital for the rest of their lives and brag about their experience to their friends and neighbors. Thus, the hospital creates its own fan base.

LincolnHealth officials say they are willing to absorb those costs. They say the possible closure is not driven by money.

But, and you knew there would be a but, they say they can’t find doctors willing to work at a hospital that has no birthing customers two-thirds of the time.

Sometimes, these customers don’t arrive during business hours, for babies come into this world on their own timetable. Some say today's doctors don’t want to work nights and weekends. So, the hospital is forced to hire part-time doctors from around the nation to staff their labor and delivery center. 

On the other side of the coin are irate and emotional customers who demand these services.

Last week, at a pair of community forums, dozens of women, old and young, stepped up to the microphone and told heart-wrenching stories of deliveries that went wrong or almost went wrong as they drove long distances to the hospital.

They praised Miles hospital workers for their skill, their empathy, and the caring way they helped shepherd women into motherhood. The hospital’s best customers were shedding tears at the very thought that the unit might close and pleaded with officials to change their decision.

While they are asking for hep, they are prepared to fight.

Like their neighbors who banded together to block Walmart from moving to Damariscotta, they have organized a sophisticated campaign called Miles Delivers, arguing that MaineHealth, a not-for-profit hospital system, has a fat balance sheet paying its big boss $2 million a year, while Miles enjoys property tax-free status on acres of prime waterfront property. They are also huddling with politicians, lawyers and data crunchers planning to oppose closure and have offered to help hospital officials solve their doctor problem.

But, is there really a problem?

Like overhead, parking lots, helicopter landing pads, clean towels, and toilet paper, shouldn’t hospitals treat labor and delivery services as just another cost of doing business? Isn't the customer always right?

If modern medicine can invent a little blue pill that revitalizes old men, discover another helping others shed pounds, and replace shoulders, hips and hearts like old spark plugs, surely modern medicine can find a way to keep Miles’ labor and delivery unit open so strong Maine women can birth happy babies in a local coastal hospital.

Can’t they?