MaineGeneral Hospital Proposal Pitfalls Are Noted
By Betty Adams, Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine
Sep. 23–Shopping and health care may appear to be strange bedfellows.
But in today’s world, health care follows retail, said Warren Kessler, the man who led the region’s health-care system for more than a quarter-century before retiring in 1998.
So Kessler said he’s worried that an idea under study for reshaping the future of MaineGeneral Health appears to buck that trend. The result, he said could be fewer patients, and that means less revenue.
MaineGeneral Health operates three hospitals, one in Augusta and two in Waterville. Unable to recruit an adequate number of physicians and nurses and faced with aging buildings, administrators confirmed last week that they are considering moving all in-patient care to the larger of the two Waterville hospitals.
They also are weighing whether to close Augusta’s in-town hospital and replace it with an out-patient center in north Augusta near the new cancer center.
“I think there’s going to be some problems with this proposal,” Kessler said last week, just days after being lauded for his vision in guiding the Kennebec Valley health-care system through turbulent times. The building that houses an innovative program he helped establish, the Maine Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency, was named in his honor.
Kessler, a resident of Manchester, said his comments are based on his 35 years in health care. He said he was not involved in the discussions about how to reorganize MaineGeneral.
“Waterville has great north-south transportation, as we do, but not east-west,” Kessler said. “We have the east-west corridors. That’s why the shopping centers are in Augusta.”
Kessler said retail marketing studies show the Augusta area serves 375,000 people.
“Health care has always followed retail shopping, so that’s a problem that I see,” he said. “Clearly, the pros put the shopping in Augusta, not Waterville, because of the same east-west corridors.”
He said limiting in-patient services to Waterville would pose problems in the Augusta community.
“I think we’re going to lose some patients,” Kessler said. “Those from Winthrop and Readfield will be going to Lewiston; Gardiner might very well be headed to Brunswick.”
He said people from the southern and western end of Kennebec County may find it too far or too difficult to travel to the north end of Waterville for obstetric or pediatric services.
Susan Pierter, MaineGeneral Health spokeswoman, said the issues of transportation accessibility and finances have yet to be addressed in the ongoing study by hospital medical staff and administrative personnel.
“We’re not at that point yet,” she said.
Pierter said those areas would be investigated once the internal staff review decides on a direction to pursue.
“Our intent is to find a solution to address continuing quality care, and access to that is certainly important,” Pierter said.
MaineGeneral began the study with the assumption that “Physician, nursing and specialized clinical staff shortages make covering two inpatient campuses unsustainable.”
Kessler questioned a plan that would leave two maternity units and two emergency rooms in Waterville — at MaineGeneral’s Thayer campus and at Inland Hospital — and none in Augusta, the largest community. Inland Hospital is part of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, with headquarters in Bangor.
“Clearly you could accomplish most of the savings in this by merging the hospitals in Waterville,” Kessler said.
Kessler took heat for ending Gardiner General Hospital’s role as a full-service hospital in 1987, and then shepherded a 1997 merger of Kennebec Valley Health System and Mid-Maine Health Systems to form MaineGeneral Health.
He retired in 1999.
“I don’t think it’s an issue between the two cities, that one’s better than the other, or capacity, or even a capital city without an acute-care hospital,” Kessler said.
“It’s a practical issue of public transportation.”
“I’m not (being) critical,” he said. “I just see some issues that were there 20 years ago, are there now, and will be there 20 years from now.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine
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