LEWISTON — Unless they received more financial information from Central Maine Healthcare, state regulators were set to recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services deny Central Maine Healthcare’s request to take over Parkview Adventist Medical Center in Brunswick.

The DHHS Division of Licensing and Regulatory Services, which reviews and recommends approval or denial of projects by health care facilities, granted CMHC an extra month to get the information. But this week, days before that deadline, CMHC suspended its application, saying it needed more time. 

Ken Albert, director of the division, said Friday that the suspension has been granted. CMHC will now have up to a year to furnish the information and reactivate its application.

CMHC, the parent organization of Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, learned of the impending denial recommendation on Jan. 17, during a meeting with the division. Albert said hospital officials were told they failed to provide enough information, including standard information regarding the economic feasibility of a merger.

“When we get an application, we’re accustomed to seeing economic feasibility studies and there wasn’t one,” Albert said.

The division also wanted more information on CMHC’s fitness, willingness and ability to provide services, the public need for such a merger and the economic development of health care facilities.

“It’s not that we wouldn’t approve the application,” Albert said. “It was that we couldn’t. So that was going to be our decision.”

CMHC had 10 days to get that information. The division provided a month’s extension, bumping the deadline to Feb. 26.

CMHC spokesman Chuck Gill said hospital officials were surprised at the division’s planned denial and the need for more information.

“We had no communication to that effect until that meeting,” Gill said.

He agreed that CMHC didn’t provide a feasibility study, but he said hospital officials thought they provided sufficient financial information in the inch-and-a-half thick Certificate of Need application packet. He said hospital officials could not gather the requested information by Feb. 26, so they asked to suspend the application. 

“Going forward, we will proceed with the feasibility study,” Gill said. “We believe it’s a very approvable application and we’ll come back and provide the information that they request.”

Gill said CMHC likely will hire an outside consultant to complete the study.

Once CMHC’s application is reactivated, the Division of Licensing and Regulatory Services will consider CMHC’s proposal and make a recommendation to DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew. She will make the final decision.

[email protected]