The St. Andrews Hospital Task Force members said they hope their consultant’s report, released January 23, will be key to their efforts to keep St. Andrews emergency room open and its hospital status unchanged (follow link to read full report).

The iVantage/Gabarro report concludes: “It is possible to have a Critical Access Hospital on the Boothbay Peninsula. MaineHealth and Lincoln County Healthcare should reverse their decision to close the Emergency Department at St. Andrews Hospital.” 

In a press release, task force members Smith Climo, Stuart Smith and Valerie Augustine said the report presented new information that could be crucial to attaining their goal.

“Up until now I thought we couldn’t dispute the facts presented by Lincoln County Healthcare and MaineHealth,” Climo said. “I’m proud and excited with the report from iVantage. I hope that this will lead to constructive dialogue with the hospital.”

“I think the report highlights facts that can be used to redirect decision makers. There is another path that can be embraced by the community,” Smith said.

Lincoln County Healthcare and MaineHealth had their first look at the consultant’s report on January 24 in a closed meeting with the Task Force. 

On January 25, LCH CEO Jim Donovan said the healthcare organization would provide comments on the report at a later date. He also said he saw nothing in the report’s data and analysis that support its recommendations, nor any no new information that would cause LCH to change its decision.

The report

The iVantage/Gabarro report concludes that St. Andrews’ critical access hospital designation should be maintained and the ER remain open under a different staffing model. They also provide a series of recommendations to expand services at St. Andrews Hospital to improve its viability (see box). These conclusions and others in the 36-page document affirm the task force’s contentions.  

In developing their report, consultants Scott Goodspeed, iVantage Analytics and Ralph Gabarro interviewed approximately 40 residents and representatives of Lincoln County Healthcare; these residents, chosen by the task force, are viewed as representative of the region.

The report consists mostly of pages of data tables, many of which are not explained or referenced in the report’s narrative.

As acknowledged in the report, the interviews, rather than the data presented, have driven some of the conclusions and recommendations developed. For example, Lincoln County Healthcare has said that services at St. Andrews have been eliminated over time because there has not been enough patient use to support them. People have voted with their feet, Donovan said in an interview last August. 

The task force’s point of view, echoed in the iVantage report and noted in the first draft as something that was heard in interviews, is that LCH eliminated services and it is those intentional actions that have driven St. Andrews’ lower patient volumes and small share of the local healthcare market. 

This different view of what has driven patient use trends cannot be resolved by the data provided in this report. However, the market share and hospitalization data presented do support LCH’s contention that patient volumes in St. Andrews’ service area, the Boothbay peninsula, are low, which conflicts with the report’s recommendations to expand programs. 

The report does not examine St. Andrews Hospital’s ability to sustain proposed inpatient, outpatient surgery and other recommended programs relative to the market/use data presented, e.g., the small number of patients in the service area and patient choice for competing larger hospitals, such as Mid Coast and Maine Medical Center.

What next?

The LCH Board of Trustees will discuss the consultant’s report in their meeting on January 31. Donovan said LCH will provide comments on the report and its recommendations after the trustees meeting.

On Monday, Task Force Chairman Chuck Cunningham said the next steps for the task force are dependent upon LCH’s actions. “I’m waiting to hear back from Lincoln County Healthcare on the information in this report and how it compares to their Navigant report,” he said.

Cunningham said he is also still waiting to hear LCH’s comments on the task force’s legal position paper distributed in November.

“I want to sit at the table with them and work this out,” Cunningham said. “I know we all have the same goal for the region.”

The next task force meeting is scheduled for February 5 at the Boothbay Town Office. LCH is also planning a community forum, tentatively scheduled for late February.

Sue Mello can be reached at 207-844-4629 or sumello@boothbayregister.com.