Hospital boards consider affiliation

BLUE HILL – Hospital boards in Bangor and Blue Hill are scheduled to vote Wednesday on the affiliation between Blue Hill Memorial Hospital and Eastern Maine Healthcare System.

If approved, the Blue Hill hospital will become the seventh hospital in the EMH system. The vote comes after a decision last month by EMH corporators which, among other elements, will provide for representation by a smaller group of corporators representing the nine-county region the hospital serves.

The Blue Hill hospital’s governance board and the EMHS ad hoc committee have both adopted resolutions recommending approval.

Blue Hill hospital administrators stressed Monday that closer ties to Bangor will not weaken local oversight of the community hospital and that decisions about health care and finances will continue to be made locally. Although the affiliation will ensure that physicians throughout the system have access to the best information about best practices, it also allows local physicians the ability to do what they think is best for the individual patient, according to Timothy Garrity, CEO of Blue Hill Memorial Hospital.

“This will make available the resources to help [our physicians] provide the best care possible,” Garrity said Monday. “This system provides for a collaborative process that will allow for individual preferences and the close physician-patient relationship. That most important relationship will not change.”

Affiliation with EMHS will change to some extent the administrative and governance structure of the hospital, while allowing it to maintain control of its local endowment and fund-raising efforts.

The hospital now operates under the umbrella of the Blue Hill Hospital Foundation, which oversees the hospital, including Hancock County Home Care, Peninsula Primary Care, and the hospital’s endowment, along with Coastal Holdings Inc., which operates the Parker Ridge retirement community.

Under the affiliation, EMHS will become the parent company of the hospital, Hancock County Home Care and Peninsula Primary Care. The foundation will not be part of the affiliation and will continue to operate Parker Ridge and to manage the hospital’s endowment and fund-raising efforts.

Having EMHS as a parent company will mean that there will be some joint decisions on governance responsibilities, according to Garrity. Each member hospital creates its own budget, elects its own board and defines its own bylaws, subject to approval of the EMHS board of directors. The EMHS board selects the CEO of the member hospital in collaboration with the local board of directors.

“We will still maintain a great deal of autonomy,” Garrity said. “We will always be Blue Hill Memorial Hospital and we will still be accountable to a board that represents the community we serve.”

By integrating information systems – a process that is already under way at EMHS – the local hospital can also better monitor a patient’s health care throughout visits whether they are in Blue Hill or Bangor, Garrity said. The affiliation also will allow Blue Hill to offer specialty services to its patients locally at the hospital or at primary care facilities throughout the area.

Financial benefits will come in the form of economies of scale. The hospital already has saved by piggybacking its purchase of CAT scan equipment with an EMHS purchase. Employee health care benefits for 300 employees is a $3 million annual bill for the hospital. Being a member hospital will give Blue Hill an opportunity to lower that bill by linking with the EMHS, which has 6,000 employees.

“We don’t have any target number,” Garrity said, “but we anticipate there will significant savings.”

Wednesday’s vote, if positive, will start a six-month review process before the hospitals close on the deal. Once completed, there also will be a 48-month period within which either party can withdraw from the agreement.