BY KATHRYN BORN
Los Alamos

The discussion around this issue is starting to form into two camps, so I’d like to address this:

The first group is saying that Los Alamos needs Labor & Delivery (L&D) services within 20 minutes for women who are having labor complications and, for whatever reason, cannot make it to the regional facility.

But now some are arguing that LAMC was so lousy that closing it is actually for the best. They argue that it’s worse to have a local place that appears to provide services when, in reality, they turn you away as well. That wastes precious time.

Their argument is that you are better off simply getting in the car and praying you don’t have to pull over next to a cliff, with no cellular service, and do a “home birth” in the hatchback in a dark ditch, hoping a truck doesn’t slam into you afterward. Assuming both mother and child survive the delivery. Those people argue this is the better option.

My op-ed: are these really our only choices? Of course not.

One option is to create a decent emergency OB-GYN surgical capability. The ER already has an operating suite. What it lacks is OB-GYN staffing. The single most expensive component is the physicians themselves. Normally an OB-GYN might cost $300K per year. Here, it may need to be $600K. In addition, you need more than one physician so they are not effectively on call 24/7.

On the surface, to LifePoint, that may seem expensive per patient. And for poor and marginalized people in rural areas, this reality already exists every day. Mothers and babies have already died in the last 12 months because of gaps like this.

But what gives Los Alamos unusual leverage is this: LANL has a billion-dollar agenda that simply will not work without recruiting top-level talent. They need senior expertise in AI, quantum computing, computational physics, high-performance computing, data science, and cybersecurity.

Now look at the math. A recruit considering Los Alamos already qualifies for a $200K compensation package almost anywhere in the country. They can get that while living in a larger city with strong schools, arts, healthcare, nightlife and infrastructure. They are not desperate enough to settle in a small town where their bored trans kid gets bullied and their partner may have to give birth in the back seat of a car without a doctor. They do not have to live in a town where a multi-billion-dollar regional economy still has a shuttered department store sitting on its main street for years.

This is an empowered workforce with options.

The result, as we saw with Intel in Rio Rancho, is that eventually institutions stop investing in the town itself and begin building satellite locations in places that are easier to staff and more livable.

So the real question may not be whether Los Alamos can afford world-class healthcare infrastructure. The real question is whether it can afford not to.

Because eventually the options become:
either provide the level of infrastructure necessary to sustain a world-class science institution, or slowly allow Los Alamos to cycle down into something smaller and less ambitious, where six-figure technical salaries remain possible for people without college degrees, but life-saving healthcare access is simply not there.

That is the actual choice.