AUGUSTA – A slap in the face, “an insult,” is how the Maine Hospital Association reacted Tuesday to recommendations from the state Commission to Study Maine Hospitals.

MHA lobbyist Mary Mayhew said the commission’s report is not only “blaming” hospitals for high costs, but is threatening to regulate them, something hospitals object to.

The commission is part of Gov. John Baldacci’s Dirigo program, designed to lower health costs, increase access and improve care throughout Maine.

On Monday the commission gave its nod to draft recommendations it said are designed to improve care and cut costs at Maine’s 39 hospitals. The recommendations include new wellness programs paid by a new tax on junk food, voluntary limits on hospital profits, not-so-subtle directives to reduce some hospitals’ top-heavy administrations, and measures to reduce competition among hospitals.

Hospitals officials agree with much of the 60-page, single-spaced draft report, Mayhew said, “but the tone in the overall document is too focused on laying blame at the feet of Maine’s community hospitals and ignoring the reality of the challenges that hospitals are dealing with every day.”

The report is “an insult,” she said, particularly one part that implies, as interpreted by the MHA, that hospital board members “have not done their jobs, when the reality is these hospitals are the ones on the front lines trying to meet so many needs of their communities, in spite of all the challenges.”

Throughout the report there is a view that hospitals have not been managed appropriately, Mayhew said, adding that hospitals collaborate with each other all the time.

As written, the report will create a negative reaction during public hearings on the commission’s legislative recommendations Jan. 6 and 7, and could lead to missed opportunities to achieve lower health costs and increased access, she predicted.

John Welsh, president of Rumford Hospital and one of two hospital-affiliated members on the nine-member commission, said there are many recommendations in the report that hospitals do support.

Hospitals like the idea of health care quality initiatives, new community wellness programs, electronic medical records and a recognition that Maine receives a smaller percentage in federal Medicare reimbursement than other states, he said.

“And there’s interest in hospitals’ further collaborating with one another to be more efficient and better serve their communities,” Welsh said.

But hospitals disagree with other parts of the report, he said.

In the report “there’s an underlying tone in the report that’s antagonistic toward Maine’s hospitals.” If hospitals are to work with the state, there needs to be a greater recognition of the good that Maine hospitals do for their communities, “and not set up an adversarial relationship,” Welsh said.

Welsh and Mayhew said they’re concerned about a threat of increased state regulation, ranging from requested reports on how hospitals plan to cut costs to the creation of statewide standards of efficiency, care and financial health for Maine hospitals.

“Maine hospitals are responsibly run,” Welsh said. “We feel governance should remain in communities, not moving Maine toward a centralized, regulatory system controlled by the state.”

Efforts to get comments from officials at Central Maine Medical Center and St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston and Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington were unsuccessful.