The St. Andrews Task Force was formed in response to a local crisis (the closing of St. Andrews Hospital's 24/7 emergency room). The four affected towns entered into an interlocal agreement to form a task force with a representative from each of the towns. The representatives were volunteers from each town's Board of Selectmen: Smith Climo from Southport, Chuck Cunningham from Boothbay, Valerie (Augustine) Young from Boothbay Harbor, and Stuart Smith from Edgecomb.

The town of Boothbay also provided meeting space, and offered its Town Manager Jim Chaousis to facilitate the work of the task force and of the many volunteers who began to attend the task force meetings and to organize into working groups. This interlocal agreement expires on June 30, 2013. And, at least one of the selectmen serving on the task force, Valerie Young,  will no longer be a selectman after May 4, 2013.

Being a public body, the task force has held its meetings in open, public forums, all of which have been videotaped and made available by Channel 7 (Boothbay Region Community TV).

The task force will present a final report back to each town's board of selectmen with a summary of what the group has achieved since its formation last August. The report will include the “Voice of the Community” Report and healthcare needs analysis based on the 50 interviews of Boothbay peninsula residents that were conducted in the fall. It will also include the legal Position Paper created by legal adviser Julius Ciembronowicz, the hospital viability study from consultants iVantage Consulting and Ralph Gabarro; and the Second Opinion public presentation on February 26 that combined analysis from the iVantage/Gabarro Report with recommendations gleaned from task force volunteers' visits to 11 other rural Critical Access Hospitals.

The rask force report will also include suggestions for the next steps, including the resolution to transfer all of the valuable information the task force volunteers have gathered to the Boothbay Region Health and Wellness Foundation.

It was Bill Hamblen, then chairman of the Boothbay Harbor Board of Selectmen, who first questioned the appropriateness of the governance structure of the task force for addressing the issue of Saving St. Andrews as a local community hospital.

Hamblen pointed out that this work could be done more expeditiously by a private, nonprofit corporation. That way, concerned citizens could meet in private, plan their strategy in private, and take legal action, if required.

It was, in part, as a result of Hamblen's suggestion that the Boothbay Region Health and Wellness Foundation was formed to pick up the work of the task force to Save St. Andrews, as well as to proactively address many of the health issues on our peninsula that the St. Andrews' Task Force volunteers had uncovered in the course of their due diligence.

Many volunteers have now spent 10 months in a diligent effort to: understand the needs of the people in our four communities, discover how other small communities in Maine meet those needs, and outline a vision of what services can and should be offered locally on our peninsula. The Wellness Foundation was established to provide an ongoing institution that can focus on meeting unmet health and wellness needs whatever happens to our local emergency room and hospital.