Star Tribune
Essentia hospital in rural Fosston, Minnesota, will stop delivering babies
Baby deliveries will no longer be scheduled at Essentia Health’s hospital in Fosston, Minn., under a plan that will further erode labor and delivery services outside of Minnesota’s largest cities.
The northwest Minnesota hospital had hoped to reopen its obstetrical unit after a shortage of trained staff forced it in June 2022 to divert deliveries an hour’s drive south to Essentia’s hospital in Detroit Lakes. Now that change will be permanent. Recruiting had become challenging at a time when births are declining in the region but pregnancies are more likely to involve risks and complications, according to a written statement provided Friday by Essentia spokesman Anthony Matt.
Pre- and post-delivery care will continue in Fosston even if the deliveries happen elsewhere, the statement said. “This increasingly common model of shared maternity services provides the safest care possible to our moms and newborns.”
Essentia’s decision follows closures over the past decade by rural hospitals including Grand Marais, Baudette, Appleton and Canby — putting labor and delivery a half hour or more away for expecting mothers in those communities. Minnesota led the nation with 22 hospitals closing their obstetrical units from 2011 through 2021, including six that stopped delivering babies during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report last month by the Chartis Center for Rural Health.
Minnesota has more small, rural hospitals than many states — which partly explains its elevated number of closures — but it is losing OB access in key areas, said Katy Kozhimannil, a University of Minnesota public health researcher who has examined the trend.
Hospitals see substantial increases in unscheduled births in their emergency rooms after they close their OB units, and Kozhimannil encouraged Essentia leaders to prepare for that. It takes more than an hour for someone in Fosston to drive across the remote roads of the White Earth Reservation, even in good weather, to reach Essentia’s hospital in Detroit Lakes. Sanford Health’s nearby hospital in Bagley, Minn., stopped scheduling baby deliveries years ago, and its regional medical center in Bemidji is 45 miles east.
“So it’s making sure they have emergency obstetric capacity at Fosston and folks that are able to handle [deliveries] if the roads are impassible,” Kozhimannil said. “We know that is going to happen so there needs to be a plan in place.”
Expectant mothers in communities where hospitals close OB units also are less likely to receive adequate prenatal care and more likely to have preterm births, which are leading risk factors for infant mortality and birth defects, she said. These women often find that after the closures, their local OB clinics have reduced their hours or provide only basic services — referring patients to far-off hospitals for specialized tests or ultrasounds, she said.
The challenge for hospitals is that declining birth numbers can be a self-perpetuating cycle, making it harder to recruit doctors or to persuade women to choose them for their deliveries. Low numbers also make it hard for practitioners to maintain competency, which in turn results in higher malpractice insurance premiums if they want to continue to provide childbirths.
Births declined at the Fosston hospital from 89 in 2017 to 60 in 2021, the fourth-lowest total in the state that year. The hospital then reported 38 in 2022 when it started diverting births to Detroit Lakes. Essentia leaders will discuss plans to permanently stop scheduling baby deliveries in Fosston at a Jan. 30 state public hearing.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Donald Trump walked down the steps of the Boeing 757 that bears his name, walked across a rain-soaked tarmac and, after twice missing the handle, climbed into the passenger seat of a white garbage truck that also carried his name.
The former president, once a reality TV star known for his showmanship, wanted to draw attention to a remark made a day earlier by his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden, that suggested Trump’s supporters were garbage. Trump has used the remark as a cudgel against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
”How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump said, wearing an orange and yellow safety vest over his white dress shirt and red tie. ”This is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Trump and other Republicans were facing pushback of their own for comments by a comedian at a weekend Trump rally who disparaged Puerto Rico as a ”floating island of garbage.” Trump then seized on a comment Biden made on a late Wednesday call that “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The president tried to clarify the comment afterward, saying he had intended to say Trump’s demonization of Latinos was unconscionable. But it was too late.
On Thursday, after arriving in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for an evening rally, Trump climbed into the garbage truck, carrying on a brief discussion with reporters while looking out the window — similar to what he did earlier this month during a photo opportunity he staged at a Pennsylvania McDonalds.
He again tried to distance himself from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose joke had set off the firestorm, but Trump did not denounce it. He also said he did not need to apologize to Puerto Ricans.
”I don’t know anything about the comedian,” Trump said. ”I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him. I heard he made a statement, but it was a statement that he made. He’s a comedian, what can I tell you. I know nothing about him.”
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