Merger of hospitals OK'd, with condition
The state has given the green light for Lincoln County Healthcare to acquire full control of Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta, St. Andrews Hospital in Boothbay Harbor and a nursing home.
However, the Portland Press Herald reported, there is one condition: the health care network must open an around-the-clock urgent care center in Boothbay. A spokesman for Lincoln County Healthcare, a MaineHealth company, said the health care network was surprised by the condition and that it was evaluating how to move forward.
Mary Mayhew, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services, which approved the health care network's certificate of need, said the merger is contingent on the Boothbay urgent care center opening within three months. Lincoln County Healthcare must keep it open for three years, unless it can prove the demand is not high enough to justify the costs. If that is the case, the health care network would only have to keep the center open for 18 months.
The St. Andrews Hospital had closed its emergency room due to low demand, and then converted it into an urgent care facility that would only be open 12 hours a day, but not have the capacity to handle critical care patients and those who arrive by ambulance. Patients who need emergency care treatment in the area have been sent to Miles Memorial Hospital ever since.
“Our analysis, shared with the Department of Health and Human Services, concluded that an urgent care center operating 12 hours per day was indeed in the best health interests of the community,” a statement from Lincoln County Healthcare read, “and we are working to understand the requirement by the [certificate of need] for this additional investment in service delivery.”
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