Trustees of EMMC to probe complaints

BANGOR – The Eastern Maine Medical Center board of trustees decided Friday to use official channels to address the complaints of doctors unhappy with the administration. They also gave the hospital’s CEO, Norman Ledwin, a strong vote of confidence, Chairman John Woodcock reported after a morning meeting.

Woodcock said the board agreed with a proposal from the medical staff’s president, Dr. James Raczek, and vice president, Dr. Irwin Gross, that the two explore the complaints with their peers and look for ways to address the problems. Both men were elected by the medical staff, and Raczek is an employee of the hospital.

“They felt the quality issues published in the newspaper were primarily medical staff issues,” Woodcock said. Because they are the elected heads of the medical staff, they represent an appropriate channel for communication, he said.

The complaints have centered on the hospital’s commitment to recruitment and reimbursement of private-care doctors who practice there. Woodcock reiterated that medical care at EMMC continues to be of the highest quality.

The board didn’t invite any of the complaining doctors to the three-hour, closed-door meeting Friday. And board members turned down a suggestion made by Dr. Thomas Palmer, an emeritus member, that they should seek direct comment from the unhappy physicians.

Palmer, a current member of the Eastern Maine Healthcare board of trustees, said he’d prefer that the issues be handled privately between administration, doctors and board members, and that direct inquiry was necessary because the rifts are deep.

“I think that will happen eventually,” he said.

Woodcock reported that the board gave Ledwin a strong vote of support. Seventeen members voted for the resolution and one abstained, he said.

The meeting came at the end of a week in which doctors on both sides of the issue have debated the significance of staffing and recruitment problems to hospital care.

On Tuesday, 31 doctors representing every specialty and general practice in Bangor met to begin drafting a petition for the EMMC board, describing problems some say endanger patient care.

On Wednesday, the hospital held a press conference in which Dr. Norman Dinerman, chief of emergency medicine, said the problems were significant, but not as dire as portrayed.

On Friday, Palmer said there is no question that all parties at EMMC – doctors, trustees and administrators alike – are devoted to achieving the best possible care of patients.

While the board didn’t take Palmer up on his idea to speak directly to dissenting doctors, it decided to have Woodcock attend a meeting next week of the hospital’s Medical Staff Executive Committee.

Raczek and Ledwin did not return calls for comment on the board’s action.

One of the administration’s vocal critics, anesthesiologist Dr. Richard J. Smith, found the board’s actions Friday disappointing. Raczek and Gross fall under administrative constraints, he said.

Concerns have not made it through official channels for a long time, he said. If the issues had been addressed long ago, doctors wouldn’t have felt it necessary to go public on their own, he said.

But until direct communication happens, Smith said, “it is going to be a battle in the media because we don’t have a way of talking to them.”

Ledwin and some trustees said earlier this week that allegations by doctors that they don’t have effective official channels for communicating concerns are untrue.