Hospitals decry DHS’ center approval

WELLS – A group of hospitals from York County and New Hampshire has run newspapers ads criticizing the state for favoring a competing proposal for a proposed cancer center.

Earlier this month, a unit of the Maine Department of Human Services recommended giving approval to the proposal put forward by Maine Medical Center of Portland and Southern Maine Medical Center of Biddeford. That facility would be called The Cancer Care Center.

“We believe that this superficial opinion fails to understand the importance of the network of medical services at a community level and ignores the damage that such an effort will have on the development of local cancer services,” said the advertisement for York Hospital, Goodall Hospital in Sanford and Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, N.H.

The ad urged residents to support the hospitals’ bid to create the York County Radiation Therapy Collaborative at a public hearing. That meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Village by the Sea Conference Center on Route 1.

DHS spokesman Newell Augur said both proposals are good and that the initial recommendation is not a final decision.

York Hospital spokeswoman Dawn Grasso declined to specify the details of the group’s plan, but said misconceptions will be corrected at the public hearing.

For example, she said, much has been made of the fact that neither York Hospital nor Goodall Hospital are accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer while both Maine Medical and Southern Maine Medical are.

“To us, that’s really a nonissue,” she said. “In this case, the new facility is a separate entity and would go through the accreditation process.”

Another reason cited by the state in favoring the competing proposal is that Goodall Hospital is currently operating on a conditional license because of alleged deficiencies.

Goodall Treasurer Dale Shaw said the deficiencies were mainly related to not having certain paperwork in place rather than issues related to patient care.

Maine Medical Center spokesman Wayne Clark said his hospital would reserve most of its comment for Wednesday, but said the accreditation issue is important.

“We believe it’s quite relevant because 80 percent of cancer treatment in this country is delivered by accredited programs for a reason,” he said. “There’s no accreditation for just one facility.”

Each proposal aims to have a facility by 2003.