EMHS opponents call public meeting

BANGOR – Wary of impending changes in the corporate structure of the region’s largest health care organization, a group of doctors and other Bangor area residents have called a public meeting to air their concerns and present an alternative.

The so-called Good Governance group has invited all of the Eastern Maine Healthcare corporators – about 400 community members charged with the selection and oversight of EMH board members – to a meeting at the Bangor Public Library at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7. The public is welcome.

The purpose of the meeting, according to one Good Governance member, is to alert corporators to alternatives to the proposed changes. Even though board members at the EMH parent corporation, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, have adjusted the plan in response to some corporators’ concerns, those changes do little to ensure meaningful community involvement, the source said.

“On the surface it looks like a compromise… but it’s just a sugar coating,” said one Good Governance member, who asked not to be identified. “The original identity, autonomy and authority of the corporators is being substantially weakened.”

Corporators have traditionally elected board members. Because they also nominate and elect their own membership, they have provided an independent check to boards and the administrators they oversee. While some in the community champion the 100-year-old corporator model as the key to community accountability, others have characterized it as unwieldy, outdated and an impediment to modern health care governance.

The changes proposed by EMHS and endorsed by board members at subsidiaries throughout the expanding organization would relegate existing corporators, who are mostly from the Bangor area, to an advisory role. A new slate of 200 corporators drawn from the nine-county EMHS service area would be named with final approval from the EMHS board.

Current corporators will soon be asked by EMHS to vote on whether to change their function in order to support a more regional approach to health care. EMHS Director of Community Relations Jill MacDonald said Monday that a date for the vote has not been scheduled.

Good Governance members maintain a regional approach can be adopted while retaining corporators’ independence. They point to Maine Health in Portland, the parent organization of Maine Medical Center and many other southern Maine subsidiaries, where the autonomous corporator model is intact.