Dear Editor:

The State has mandated that LincolnHealth keep the urgent care center open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year round.

At the public hearing held this last Monday, we heard some people question why LincolnHealth would ask for reconsideration of this mandate. Urgent care available in the middle of the night right here in Boothbay Harbor, without the need to drive to the emergency room in Damariscotta ... what could be wrong with that?

What’s wrong is that it is an unfunded mandate. The state has not provided any funds to pay for the extra 12 hours every day that a minimum of 3 medical professionals will need to work at the urgent care center.

We can’t expect the people actually using the urgent care center in the middle of the night to cover the salaries of the nighttime medical staff. Our best estimate is that an average of only 2 people each night will use the service. They can’t each be asked to pay half the expense of staying open an extra 12 hours a day.

So that means prices will have to be raised for other services and other patients to subsidize the nighttime hours at the urgent care center. The burden of higher prices and higher costs falls on patients without insurance, on patients with high deductibles, on individuals and businesses paying higher premiums, on insurance companies, and on the MaineCare and Medicare programs. In other words, higher healthcare prices hurt all of us.

The LincolnHealth Board of Trustees finds this prospect objectionable. We recognize that healthcare in our communities is already too expensive — among the highest in the state. We have been working hard to control costs and bring healthcare prices down. The state’s unfunded mandate sends prices in the wrong direction. We hope the DHHS Commissioner will reconsider the 24/7 requirement and allow us to decide locally how to allocate our scarce healthcare dollars.

Jeff Curtis

LincolnHealth Board of Trustees Chairman