There are a couple of incontrovertible truths that exist in our little part of the world.

First, Maine is a state that day by day and year by year gets older. We export our kids elsewhere like the Chinese export goods to America. The white stuff you see on top of Maine could be snow or it could be the color of our ever-thinning hair.

The second is that the Brunswick area, indeed the entire readership area of this paper, lost out when our two hospitals became one. Don’t get me wrong, Mid Coast is a great hospital, but it would seem that we all benefit when there are choices to be had. When you had two players acting against each other it drove down cost. It drove competition and it allowed us, the user, to be in control of our healthcare needs. At least some of the time.

This makes the news from last week very intriguing. Topsham is welcoming a new medical office complex to its lands. What is even more interesting is that an existing space, the former Best Buy building is being repurposed for the use.

Gone will be the faded blue façade, reminiscent of a blue haired pompadour. In will come a part of one of Maine’s fastest growing industries, healthcare.

I have not heard if this medical complex will be affiliated with our local hospital or if it will be affiliated with one of the larger organizations to our south or west or even north, but it will give us choices, more than we have now, when it comes to driving our care.

The need for healthcare providers, whether it is a full-blown emergency department, a smaller urgent care setting or even doctor’s offices cannot be overstated. Thankfully in Brunswick and the surrounding area we don’t see the same wait times that those who frequent Maine Medical Center have to endure. Just last week, a nurse in the Emergency Department there was telling me that she worked a shift recently where there was a six-hour wait time just to get into the department. Six hours! Thankfully, the times that we face are much shorter.

In light of wait times like this, Portland and some cities are seeing the rise of independent urgent cares or clinics. Imagine, the space formerly filled with Bookland being an urgent care center. The healthcare consumer could actually shop for the best deal. Need an X-ray? Need a lab drawn? Shop around. Allow yourself to take the power back in healthcare.

If you like your doctor and the care provided at a local hospital you have that option. If you just want to get in and see someone, anyone, you have other options. Hospital or clinic? You choose. Think of it as, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” version 2.0.

As the area gets a little older year by year it will be important to add to this system. As more people seek services we cannot allow ourselves to think that we can just get by with the same healthcare delivery model that worked for us 20, 30, 40, years ago. Times have changed and so have the needs of the populace.

It is time for smaller, more responsive providers that can change delivery modalities to be welcomed all over the region. Maybe Topsham will be a leader in this future trend.

Someday the population of the area may rebound enough to once again have two competing hospitals caring for our sick. Until that day comes we need to have access to options that fit our lifestyle and fit our expectations of the healthcare model that we want. Every office or care center that opens gets us closer to that goal.

That’s my two cents…

Jonathan Crimmins can be reached at [email protected]