St. Mary's Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, Ga., is seeking $10 million in state funding to cover the deficit from its behavioral health service line and launch a new program, the Portland Press Herald reported Jan. 28.
St. Mary's, part of Tewksbury, Mass.-based Covenant Health, has reported significant operating losses in recent years and is estimated to have lost more than $10 million in its behavioral health services last year.
If the hospital's funding request is not granted, it will likely cut many services, with its behavioral health services considered to be at particular risk, according to the report.
"Our bandwidth is very narrow and we have huge demands," Cindy Segar-Miller, president of the hospital, said at a Jan. 24 Health and Human Services Committee public hearing. "We have undertaken a rigorous operations approach as to how we can continue to operate in this footprint."
St. Mary's plans to use the funds to establish a new day program to provide behavioral services to adults and adolescents with mental health and substance use issues, according to the report. The hospital's behavioral health emergency department is often over capacity, its inpatient adult mental health and adolescent services and chemical dependency units are full, and more services are needed for patients who are between outpatient and inpatient services.
"Often patients move from the most acute level of care in the hospital to minimal outpatient services, without opportunity for a gradual transition to a lower level of supportive care as is most appropriate in these circumstances, Sally Cooper, St. Mary's chief of behavioral medicine, wrote in a statement to the committee. "Often, there are more than 10 patients in the behavioral health emergency department waiting for inpatient treatment."
The new program would include partial hospital care or intensive outpatient care as there is an absence of lower-level care providers in St. Mary's service area that can meet the needs of chronically acute patients, according to the Portland Press Herald. Hospital leaders expect the program to serve 500 patients a year.