Northern Light Healthcare is an integrated system with about 12,000 employees and 10 member hospitals that stretch from Portland to Presque Isle: They include critical access, tertiary care and community hospitals as well as a behavioral health hospital.

Like many institutions in this post-COVID era, rising costs have forced management to take a hard look at the services on offer. Did you know that Northern Light Cancer Center in Brewer, one of the largest and newest facilities in Maine, is now limiting new patients because of a lack of oncologists?

Did you know, as of Dec. 31, Northern Light has discontinued its acute inpatient rehabilitation services at Eastern Maine Medical Center, which have served patients with traumatic brain injuries or strokes as well as recovery from surgeries or complex medical conditions? Furthermore, individuals from northern and eastern Maine will have to go to Portland or out of state to get those services.

Did you know Northern Light and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bangor have limited beds to offer new patients because of severe and persistent staffing shortages? Part of the problem involves shortages at nursing homes, which create a bottleneck; it can be difficult to transfer short-term hospital patients to beds at long-term care facilities because of lack of staffing.

The pandemic and the state’s response to it have cost us severely. We knew five years ago that the state was facing a shortage of nurses. It was a crisis then, and it is a disaster now. And yet Gov. Mills’ heating bill uses up almost $160 million of Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) funds that had been allocated and appropriated to reimburse services intended for our most vulnerable citizens. This surplus should not have been diverted to subsidize other purposes.

This story is repeated throughout New England. On Dec. 12, The Boston Globe published an article headlined: “We don’t see the end: In daily juggling act, overstretched hospitals try to maintain services.” Northern Maine is not alone.

The cost of traveling per diem staff threatens our rural health care delivery system. The refrain is commonplace: “We have been unable to hire staff to serve our wait list populations.” Unfortunately, it is not just the waitlist populations that are being underserved.

Many people are currently angling for a share of Maine’s surplus money. As Maine’s legislators perform triage, the thousands of individuals still on wait lists deserve top priority. By using funding to attract and retain staff, we can finally serve our most vulnerable citizens waiting for services. These include the brain injured, those recovering from surgery, and the developmentally disabled.

It is important to remember that caring for these individuals also helps their families. When a family member needs to quit their job to care full time for their loved one, that family loses much needed income, and the Maine economy loses another part of its workforce.

Governing responsibly involves making difficult decisions that involve prioritizing our limited resources. Mindful of the adage that “a civilization is measured by how it treats its weakest members,” we urge the Maine Legislature to fully fund long-term solutions in the upcoming biennial budget.

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