BRIDGTON – Bridgton Hospital has been approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as a critical access hospital, effective Jan. 1, 2005.

The designation means that the hospital is critical to the community – and that it is entitled to be reimbursed by Medicare at 101 percent of costs.

“It means the community has to have it,” said hospital spokesperson Pamela Smith. “And it helps keep us financially viable.” The change in Medicare designation, she said, “was the most significant reason” for becoming a critical access hospital.

With the designation, Bridgton Hospital will be reimbursed by Medicare for the actual costs of providing inpatient and hospital-based outpatient care, she said.

The critical access designation was originally created in 1997 by Congress to ensure that small and rural hospitals can survive in the face of cuts in Medicare under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

Bridgton Hospital becomes the 11th of Maine’s small hospitals to get the designation. Others include Rumford Hospital.

To be designated as critical access, a hospital has to be in a rural area with 24 beds or less, provide 24-hour emergency services, and have an average length of patient stay of 96 hours or less.

Most of the changes will be invisible to the general public and patients, Smith said. Among the rules for critical access hospitals are general limits on the number of patient beds and annual average length of stay, along with a formal transfer agreement with a larger hospital. Bridgton Hospital has such an agreement with Central Maine Medical Center. Transfers to any facility are governed by patients and their physicians.