BANGOR – Norman Ledwin said Wednesday he will step down from his position as president and chief executive officer of Eastern Maine Medical Center. Ledwin, who has held that post since 1993 and also is CEO of Eastern Maine Healthcare, the hospital’s parent corporation, made the announcement during EMH’s annual meeting.

Citing the growing administrative demands of EMH, Ledwin said he needs to spend more of his time consulting with administrators and board members at the many hospitals and other corporate affiliates in northern and eastern Maine.

Ledwin would not comment on the timing of his transition, except to say the corporation will begin the process of finding his replacement soon. That person most likely will come from within the ranks of the hospital administration, he said, rather than from an outside search.

“I also need to be spending more time in Augusta to be sure health care reform improves, instead of diminishing, health services in Maine,” Ledwin told the gathering at Acadia Hospital.

The announcement of Ledwin’s plans coincided with the incorporators’ election of new and reappointed members to the boards of EMH, EMMC and Acadia Hospital. In what was generally regarded as a successful challenge to the culture of the corporate boardrooms, all four candidates sponsored by a group of frustrated physicians and other community members were elected, along with all but one of the EMH board-nominated candidates.

The so-called Good Governance nominees – attorney M. Ray Bradford Jr. and physician Dennis Shubert for the EMH board and Sen. Mary Cathcart and nonprofit board veteran Elizabeth Warren for the hospital board – garnered the majority votes they needed to assume positions on the boards.

While some had hoped the physicians’ candidates would displace long-standing members, the board instead decided to expand the number of seats available. The EMH board was increased by two positions to incorporate Shubert and Bradford while reseating both Walter Travis and board chairman Irving Kagan.

The EMMC board was expanded by only one seat because the nominating committee members did not accept the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren, wife of Bangor Daily News publisher Richard J. Warren. Elizabeth Warren was renominated successfully from the floor. The ensuing runoff resulted in the addition to the board of Cathcart and Warren and the loss of Orono resident Esther Rauch.

The EMMC and EMH board votes were conducted by paper ballot.

There was no contest for five positions on the Acadia Hospital board. Close to 200 incorporators also were approved, including seven Good Governance nominees.

Ledwin, whose administration of the Bangor hospital has stirred controversy, said the decision to redirect his energies has no connection to recent conflicts between the hospital leadership and its medical staff. The decision was made at least a year ago, he said, and plans to announce it at the annual meeting have been in place for seven or eight months.

“No pressure at all,” he said, smiling broadly at the end of the meeting.

But pressure – or at least tension – was palpable at the meeting.

The gathering of incorporators, board members and senior executives packed the gymnasium at Acadia Hospital and overflowed into two other rooms. The gym was set up for 230 attendees instead of the usual 100, and about 50 others participated through an interactive video link to another room. Non-incorporators were asked to wait in the Acadia cafeteria, where they could watch the meeting on TV but not participate.

Media representatives were invited to observe but were kept to the rear of the room under the supervision of EMH public affairs staff.

Attendance soared at this year’s meeting in response to publicity surrounding the dispute with members of the medical staff who have taken issue with Ledwin’s ambitious hiring practices and business expansions. A group of doctors and supporters from the community have protested what they say is the failure of the governing boards at EMH and EMMC to challenge administrative actions, which they claim are having a negative impact on the delivery of health care services in the northern half of Maine as well as on the regional economy as a whole.

Members of the Good Governance Committee charge that Ledwin, supported by other senior executives at the organization, seeks to control the area’s health care environment by hiring physicians on staff and making it more difficult for private physicians to practice in the area. They also contend that investments in bricks-and-mortar projects and cutting-edge medical technologies are unsustainable and misuse money that should be spent to increase access to basic health care services.

These high-stakes administrative strategies are rubber-stamped by like-minded board members, the committee charges, and anyone who challenges the thinking behind them is open to retaliation in the form of lost business or other intimidation.

The hospital leadership contends that physicians are reacting to the national trends in health care policy, including restructuring of boards to reflect the increasingly competitive environment of the industry.

Election of board members is the provenance of the organization’s incorporators, a group of about 500 appointed community representatives and 100 ex officio members, who are included as a requirement of their position in the organization. The identity of the EMH incorporators became as much of an issue as the organization’s business strategies in recent weeks, when efforts to obtain the list of powerful voters was met with reluctance to release it. The company said it was protecting the privacy of the incorporators, but the Good Governance members claimed they were being “stonewalled” to keep them from contacting the voters to raise support for their candidates.

The list, published in the Bangor Daily News on Saturday, revealed a number of inaccuracies, including incorporators who have moved away from the area and several who are incapacitated or even dead. Several people on the list contacted the Bangor Daily News to say they were unaware they were incorporators, and Gov. John Baldacci and U.S. Sen. Susan Collins expressed surprise at seeing their names listed.

Other business at the meeting included a summary of the institution’s financial status, which Ledwin said was solidly in the black. He also detailed many clinical improvements and defended the decision to add new office space for physicians and support staff, citing greater efficiency and an increased ability for the hospital to attract new physicians.

The EMH board’s annual Distinguished Service Award was given to the Rev. Rex Garrett Jr., director of chaplaincy services at EMMC.

Lawyer Richard Thompson (second from right) from Doyle and Nelson of Augusta talks with doctors Theodore Silver (from left), Edward Harrow and Geoffrey Gratwick before the meeting.