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The Rural Maine Reporting Project is made possible through the generous support of the Betterment Fund.

Calais Hospital Making Cuts To Leadership, Support Staff

Calais Regional Hospital is cutting about 10 percent of its full-time staff.

Hospital spokesperson DeeDee Travis says the cuts will mostly be in leadership and support positions, with some through attrition.

“We’ve had no impact to any of the frontline clinical staff within the hospital itself being impacted by this,” she says.

The hospital had already been looking to cut costs and is restructuring under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but Travis says the sudden loss of revenue from outpatient care because of the COVID-19 pandemic has made matters worse.

“It kind of just spurred some of that to come to fruition a little quicker, having to respond to the impact of COVID,” she says. “Our volumes have had a serious decline, which translates into a serious decline in revenue as well, which puts us at severe financial risk very quickly, because it came on very quickly.”

The hospital has also been denied a loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, because the bankruptcy makes it ineligible.

“We’re running on the brink of how to provide the needed health care services on top of pandemic level of services when COVID cases start coming through our community — it’s a little hard to take and it’s a little hard to understand,” Travis says.

The Bangor Daily News reports that the hospital has filed a complaint in U.S. Bankruptcy Court alleging that the Small Business Administration discriminated against it.

Nora is originally from the Boston area but has lived in Chicago, Michigan, New York City and at the northern tip of New York state. Nora began working in public radio at Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor and has been an on-air host, a reporter, a digital editor, a producer, and, when they let her, played records.