WATERVILLE – Plans to build a new hospital in Waterville have been scrapped due to the inability of the two major health care systems doing business in the area to arrive at a mutually agreeable model for collaboration.

Officials from Brewer-based Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and its Waterville affiliate Inland Hospital announced Wednesday afternoon they will not seek state approval to build the $150 million facility proposed last September for the Waterville area.

According to the press release, the project is tabled indefinitely in favor of developing services at the existing 48-bed Inland facility.

EMHS’ announcement last fall indicated that “a single, modern hospital” would soon replace the three aging facilities now serving the community: Inland Hospital – the former Waterville Osteopathic Hospital – and the two campuses that together compose MaineGeneral Medical Center, an affiliate of MaineGeneral Health.

But the project did not have the support of MaineGeneral, which had ambitions of its own to improve and expand its Waterville facilities. MaineGeneral CEO Scott Bullock said at the time that efforts to collaborate with EMHS were ongoing, but in December he announced that negotiations had ended. Later that month, MaineGeneral submitted a $107 million plan to the state’s Certificate of Need office, which must approve big-ticket hospital spending. The office, which favors projects that involve provider collaboration, is expected to render a decision on the project in May or June.

As recently as mid-February, EMHS indicated it would proceed with its own plan to submit a Certificate of Need application for the new 150-bed hospital. But in Wednesday’s press release, EMHS interim CEO Dan Coffey said, without mentioning MaineGeneral by name, “… we realized that it was very likely that the state would reject the application immediately if all providers are not collaborators, so we’re looking at other strategies.”

In a phone interview on Thursday, Coffey said Inland Hospital serves about 25 percent of the Waterville market and provides close to 40 percent of the community’s labor and delivery services. An EMHS affiliate since 1997, Inland has expanded and improved services in recent years, he said. Though continuing the community’s two-hospital system will “perpetuate the duplication of services” in Waterville, Coffey said, Inland will remain an important provider in the area’s health care system.

In the earlier press release Coffey emphasized that point, saying, “While this represents a shift in gears, the community should be confident of the total and unequivocal commitment EMHS has for Inland Hospital and the people of the Waterville region.”

Bullock said Thursday that he was not surprised at the turn of events, adding that EMHS’ decision would not affect his organization’s vision for Waterville’s health care future.

“We’ve always believed our plan is the best for the Waterville area,” he said.