Under the pressure to become more efficient and the related demand to become more regional, it is understandable that Eastern Maine Healthcare would want a sleeker governing model and that its focus would be on more than just the Bangor area. But hospital members (recently known as corporators), the people who will decide in part whether the hospital system will go forward with a new plan, should not be willing to vote for such a change, at least not yet.

There are two major reasons for this, the first of which reflects on why the plan exists at all. Health care has become more complicated as its costs have demanded greater efficiency. Advances in medicine have expanded the kinds of care that are offered almost as fast as the increased scrutiny by payers and regulators have shaved revenue margins. Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems officials say they are responding to this by trying to make the governance structure more effective and efficient. Among the proposed changes is that EMHS members remove themselves from overseeing the parent board.

The potential effects of losing this level of oversight are far-reaching, but at the most basic level the question is whether the public will sacrifice accountability for the sake of allowing the board to act faster. James Orlikoff, a health care consultant brought here to help EMHS make this change, says the survival of the health care network depends on this streamlining. His observation that corporators often do not know enough about life-and-death hospital issues to make timely decisions is sobering.

The very complexity of the situation, however, requires at a minimum that members receive a broader view of the choices before them. Mr. Orlikoff says forcefully that he does not like the corporator model, an opinion, given his experience and skills, that ought to be respected. But members should hear from both the converted and the agnostic, or even those experts openly hostile to diminishing their current role. There’s no reason the board should hesitate to provide such information sessions, as was done Wednesday with Mr. Orlikoff.

The second issue is more difficult, but was described in a news story Thursday by member and Husson College president Bill Beardsley. On Mr. Orlikoff’s presentation, President Beardsley said, “He, theoretically, is right on the mark. But it’s an issue of trust … they should have more trust in the people.” Trust needs to go both ways, between community and hospital administration, for this change to occur successfully. Trust from the community is not strong, a problem that Mr. Orlikoff acknowledges makes the governance reforms much harder.

Without doubting whether changes in health care require its governance to also change, these two issues must be addressed before members can make informed choices about the system’s future.