Dear Editor:

Last week’s Register featured on its front page a story headlined “Name changes and drop in costs.”

It was written by Alan Crowell, Communications Director of Lincoln County Healthcare. It is a pack of lies. The Register published it on page 1 as a news story, with a jump to page 3.

Closing the hospital and transferring St. Andrews’ Critical Access Hospital status to Miles Memorial is presented as an innocent “name change.” Calling it this hides the drastic reduction in the number of hospital beds at Miles Memorial Hospital that transferring St Andrews’ CAH status will require, in addition to elimination of hospital beds at St. Andrews. LCH plans to cut hospital beds in Lincoln County to what prevails per capita in Afghanistan. Describing this as a “name change” is a lie.  

That moving the Critical Access Hospital designation will drop costs to people in the Boothbay region is another lie. As a CAH, St. Andrews is paid by Medicare and Medicaid at a higher rate than normal. The task force estimated the cost of surrendering CAH status at $1.5 million. LCH said that closing St Andrews was not being done for “cost savings” because the money saved by laying off 50 people at St. Andrews would be offset by loss of its CAH status.

But then LCH figured out it could have its cake and eat it too — by transferring St. Andrews’ CAH status to Miles, which will (if all goes according to plan) increase revenues by $6 million (LCH’s estimate), with both Miles and St. Andrews getting favored billings treatment. But it will not mean lower costs for St. Andrews patients than they have experienced in the past — since St Andrews has had CAH status all along. Saying that the CAH transfer can allow lower costs for those served by St. Andrews is a lie.

But the Register prints these and other lies put out by LCH and calls them “news.”

Tom Hagan
Boothbay