Within close to a month’s time, the combined boards of Miles, St. Andrews, and Lincoln County Healthcare will vote to merge Miles and St. Andrews, making Miles a subsidiary of St. Andrews so that Miles can “relocate” and inherit St. Andrews’ Critical Access Hospital designation. This will result in a maximum of 25 hospital beds for acute care and skilled nursing/rehab in Lincoln County, all of them will be at Miles (down from 63), putting us on a par with Afghanistan for beds per 1,000 people served.

I understand that LCH is trying to hire nurses for the Gregory Wing at St. Andrews Village and to designate six of those beds to be skilled nursing/rehab beds. But of course, then those beds would then be unavailable for nursing care patients at the Gregory Wing.

I would like MaineHealth/LCH to provide the following information to the people on the Boothbay peninsula and in the Miles service area: the “customers” served by its hospitals:

1. How many days in 2012 and 2013 did the number of patients in beds at Miles exceed 25?

2. What was the highest daily patients-in-beds count (not average) at St. Andrews Hospital in 2010 (before you removed acute care), 2011, 2012?

3. What has been the occupancy rate for nursing beds at the Gregory Wing at St. Andrews Village each month in 2012 and 2013? Have they ever fallen below 95 percent? What about Cove’s Edge in Damariscotta?

In short, we need the facts before our board votes to permanently reduce the number of local hospital beds available for patients in Lincoln County needing acute care or skilled nursing/rehabilitation services.

Patty Seybold
Boothbay