LEWISTON — A day after Parkview Adventist Medical Center and Central Maine Healthcare filed a joint certificate of need seeking approval for Parkview to join the CMHC family of hospitals, a spokesman for Mid Coast Health Services said that organization will also be filing a certificate of need within the next month seeking to partner with Parkview.

Mid Coast has already filed a letter of intent with the Department of Health and Human Services announcing its plan to file the certificate of need  application to consolidate acute and specialty services in the Brunswick area to Mid Coast Hospital, and will now also specifically ask the state to deny CMHC’s certificate of need application.

Certificates of need are required in most states for government to evaluate the patient demand, or need, for services and new construction before permitting hospital or nursing home projects to move forward.  

“We are seeking a partnership with Parkview Hospital,” according to Steven Trockman, who is the Mid Coast director of community relations and outreach. “We honor their spiritual mission and we honor their prevention and wellness mission, which they do exceedingly well,” he said.

The details of how that consolidation would work are not yet clear, Trockman said, “because we haven’t had that level of community conversation yet” about what people in the Brunswick area would like to see happen with their hospitals.

“If CMMC, which does great work for the Lewiston-Auburn area, if they take official ownership of this small Brunswick hospital,” Trockman said, “that officially ends that conversation. It ends our opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with Parkview and do what is best for this community,” which, he said, includes the ability to consolidate and reduce medical costs for local businesses, large and small.

Under the joint CMHC-Parkview certificate of need application, if approved, Parkview would maintain services in current form with oversight provided by CMHC. There would be no change in services at Parkview, and no change in the number of beds and scope of services. The Brunswick hospital would also maintain its ownership and tax-exempt charitable status.

On Wednesday, Mike Ortel, chairman of Parkview’s board of trustees, called the possibility of Parkview’s partnership with CMHC “by far the best option for both Parkview and the communities we serve as we go forward in the 21st century.”

Ortel supports the Parkview-CMHC partnership and said he and others at Parkview “are very excited to take this very positive step of becoming a member of the most progressive health care system in Maine.”

But Trockman said there is a great need for the Brunswick community to weigh in on the possibility of a Parkview-Mid Coast partnership.

Now that CMHC has filed its CON application, a public hearing must be held within 30 days to collect community comment. Once that’s done, DHHS will render a decision on the application for partnership within 45 days unless an extension is requested.

Trockman said Mid Coast will file its own CON, which is already in the draft stage, as quickly as possible so that the public hearings can be scheduled close together.

“We really want the community to be engaged in this,” Trockman said. “We want the community to have a say in this. Part of that process is public hearings,” he said, so “having those occur as close as possible to each other is the best way” to host that community interaction.

According to Trockman, Brunswick is the smallest community in New England to be home to two community hospitals and Mid Coast administrators understand the importance of these hospitals to the community. They are also aware of concerns about reducing patient choice through consolidation, but Trockman said midcoast residents have access — in addition to Parkview and Mid Coast — to five other hospitals within a 30-minute drive.

“There is an enormous amount of choice in this area that we wouldn’t be giving up with a partnership with Parkview,” he said, noting that the Brunswick-centric partnership could benefit local patients with reduced health care costs while also maintaining a high quality of patient care.

According to Parkview President Randee Reynolds, Parkview and CMMC have had a working relationship for more than a decade, and she looks “forward to our future association” formalized through the certificate of need process.

CMHC Chairman Paul Dionne said he also supports the Parkview/CMHC partnership and welcomes a “fourth hospital in our system” that “shares our values and aspirations and our drive for current and future excellence.”

In addition to the public hearings, DHHS will accept written comments on the respective certificate of need applications before making its decision.

Mid Coast Hospital is a 92-bed independent full-service hospital that has an average daily occupancy rate of 59 percent; Parkview is a 55-bed hospital with an average occupancy rate of 18 percent; Central Maine Medical Center is a 250-bed full-service hospital. A call to CMMC for information about average daily occupancy rate was not returned.

[email protected]