Portland-based MaineHealth wants to merge its affiliates into a single entity overseen by one governing board. However, those tentative plans are facing opposition from local hospitals, according to a Portland Press Herald report.
Here are seven things to know.
1. MaineHealth, the parent company of Maine Medical Center and 11 other hospitals and healthcare networks, seeks to combine its affiliated health systems into one nonprofit MaineHealth entity.
2. MaineHealth was initially formed as a decentralized system. At present, the board overseeing each hospital or health network manages separate budgets, and operating funds cannot be transferred from hospital to hospital, according to the report. Under MaineHealth's tentative plan, MaineHealth would become one 18,000-employee nonprofit, and the boards that currently oversee outlying hospitals would recommend changes rather than have complete control, the report states.
3. MaineHealth officials claim its proposal is fairer and more efficient, but critics are not as positive, according to the report.
"It is extremely difficult to see how something that is high-performing and operating in the black like [Boothbay Harbor, Maine-based] LincolnHealth would benefit from consolidating," Les Fossel, a board member at LincolnHealth, part of the MaineHealth system, said in the report. He said in the report he also believes losing local control of health systems could result in poor decisions coming out of Portland.
4. Additionally, a group representing 42 physicians in Waldo County also expressed similar concerns regarding local control in a letter released last week, the report notes, citing a Dec. 1 story in The Republican Journal.
5. But MaineHealth President Bill Caron said the local boards would still exist and their recommendations would be important.
6. MaineHealth's proposal still needs approval from the local health boards. According to the report, MaineHealth executives will be working over the next few months to explain the benefits of unification to board members.
7. If MaineHealth's proposal comes to fruition, budgets would be consolidated into one $2.3 billion spending plan, reports Portland Press Herald.