Northern Light Health announced today that it will close Inland Hospital in Waterville this spring.
The system says the hospital and associated clinics will continue services through May 27, and help patients transition care to other locations.
Joni Cruz of Skowhegan was at the hospital for a regular appointment when she was told about the closure today.
"You know, it's like you want us to take care of ourselves and to be healthy, but then you don't give us the access," Cruz said. "You don't give us the doctors we need. You don't give us the health care we need, you don't give us the insurance that we need. It's all it's trickle down."
The announcement comes just weeks after the hospital paused obstetrics and gynecology services, and said it would relocate several other services to the hospital campus.
Marie Vienneau, senior vice president at Northern Light Health, said the hospital has been losing $1 million a month in operational costs. And like other hospitals, has faced rising costs, low reimbursement rates and staffing challenges.
"But our facility has been very fragile for many years, and it just became apparent that any near-term strategy that we employed was not going to bring us back to a positive or even near positive operating margin," she said.
She said the hospital has 309 full time employees, and the organization is already working to connect them to new positions at other Northern Light locations or facilities.
"While many of the challenges facing Inland are similar to those at hospitals throughout Maine and the rest of the country, solutions working well in other facilities and the communities we serve have not proven successful in Waterville,” Tim Dentry, Northern Light Health president and CEO, said in a press release.
The system also pointed to other, nearby health care options and said the closure would allow it to focus on underserved regions.
"The number of service providers in the Waterville service area outweigh the operation’s critical resources available and patient volumes are not adequate to balance the costs of maintaining operations," Dentry said.
Northern Light Continuing Care Lakewood, also in Waterville, will not be affected by the hospital closure.
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree in a statement called the closure "devastating," particularly for low-income residents.
"Health care systems across the country — especially in rural areas — are struggling under the weight of rising costs, low reimbursement rates, and workforce shortages," she said.
Inland Hospital is a 48-bed facility that offers a range of inpatient and outpatient services, according to its website. The next closest inpatient facility is MaineGeneral Health in Augusta.
In a statement, Nathan Howell, president and CEO of MaineGeneral Health, said he was saddened to learn of the closure. He said the state's nonprofit hospitals- including MaineGeneral- are struggling financially, and that underlying issues must be addressed.
MaineGeneral had already been working with Northern Light to transfer obstetrics services, and will look to transition additional patients, Howell said.
"The scope of today’s announcement is one that will require much more work to assess the impact and the loss of services in our area with Inland’s closure," he said. "We will be working to evaluate these changes and how we can best support our community, both in the short and long term, as we too are grappling with navigating the changes in the health care landscape both across the state and the nation."
