State plans public hearing on Central Maine Healthcare as concerns over Prime’s ownership deepen
The entrance to the Central Maine Medical Center emergency room in Lewiston is pictured in August 2025. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer)
The state will hold a public hearing to determine whether Prime Healthcare Foundation is meeting staffing and care standards in operating Central Maine Healthcare, which includes Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston and several other facilities.
Rep. Julie McCabe, D-Lewiston, requested the hearing in a letter Monday to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Over the last year, the state health department required Prime Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit based in California, to make several commitments to maintain essential health services, safe patient volumes and trauma center status at Central Maine Healthcare before it could acquire the health system.
Compliance with those agreements is now being called into question.
“The people of Lewiston deserve a hospital system that is safely managed and adequately staffed, that upholds the agreements entered into with the state of Maine, and that follows the laws of the state,” McCabe wrote. “Based on the many conversations I have had with healthcare providers and patients, it is my belief that Prime Healthcare is not currently abiding by their (agreement).”
A public hearing is “an appropriate step,” echoed Lindsay Hammes, Maine DHHS spokesperson, in an email Thursday. She said it will be scheduled in the next several weeks.
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Central Maine Healthcare also includes hospitals in Bridgton and Rumford and a number of physician practices. McCabe said changes at the health system, including workforce attrition, sterilization equipment issues and the premature termination of a contract with an emergency department physician group, which staffed 35 providers across the three hospitals, pose a “clear and present danger” to patients.
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State officials also said the Lewiston hospital did not meet a requirement earlier this month intended to verify progress toward re-establishing trauma center status, a designation that lapsed before Prime took over — leaving just two destinations in Maine for around-the-clock emergency surgery.
CUT SHORT
Rumford Hospital, is seen in 2021. (Staff photo)
Central Maine Healthcare notified BlueWater Health last month that it was terminating its contract to staff three emergency departments in Lewiston, Bridgton and Rumford, effective Jan. 12.
The departments were short 17 physicians and relying heavily on locum tenens, or temporary providers, when the Brunswick-based physician group signed the three-year contract in early 2025, said Dr. Jay Mullen, CEO of BlueWater Health. The group has since filled those vacancies and recruited 18 more physicians, nurses and physician assistants to Central Maine Healthcare.
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Mullen said it’s difficult to retain board-certified emergency physicians because they can get jobs anywhere in the country, “so rural areas are always struggling.” Most of their recruits to Maine came from out of state.
Now, Mullen said 80% of the 35 providers will leave Central Maine Healthcare when their contract ends in January. Two-thirds will take roles elsewhere with BlueWater Health, which he said staffs emergency departments across New England and recently signed a contract with St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston. Others are moving out of state.
One emergency department physician leaving the health system for another role with BlueWater Health, who asked to remain unnamed, said instability is driving her away.
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“There is some fatigue of the chaos that seems to kind of be currently encircling Central Maine,” she said, “a lot of loss of the medical staff and nursing changes. I think a lot of members of my group would agree with me that people feel that they need to step away from Central Maine.”
A Central Maine Healthcare spokesperson said the health system is in ongoing discussions with BlueWater Health and Vituity, a California-based emergency physician group. “Regardless of the outcome of these negotiations,” the spokesperson said, “most physicians that have provided ED services at Central Maine Healthcare will have the opportunity to continue to do so with the firm that is selected.”
McCabe, the state representative, said it was negligent for Central Maine Healthcare to terminate the BlueWater Health contract with only a few months’ notice and no arrangement to “fill the void.”
Hospitals are required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to report the rate of emergency department visitors who leave without being seen by a physician. More than a year into the BlueWater contract, Central Maine Healthcare’s rate dropped from 7.2% to 3.5%. In the last three months, it’s climbed back up to 5.7%, according to data shared by McCabe and verified by Mullen.
The national benchmark is 2%.
“When you have increased wait times, people leave without being seen, and that doesn’t mean that they’re not sick. It just means that they gave up,” McCabe said. “And when you have those kinds of repeated interactions at the ED, you’re going to lose faith in your healthcare system.”
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TRAUMA CENTER IN LIMBO
Maine’s health department regulates how ownership acquisitions, mergers and other major healthcare changes can happen in Maine, and by who.
To acquire Central Maine Healthcare, Prime Healthcare Foundation needed the state’s sign-on. Their problem: CMMC lets its level three trauma center designation lapse in December 2025, the month after the state made it a mandatory condition of the acquisition.
The loss of a trauma center in Lewiston has impacted patients who spend more time on the road — sometimes with life-threatening injuries — to reach the remaining trauma centers at hospitals in Portland and Bangor. It’s uprooted dozens of EMS agencies and increased trauma patient volumes at the other hospitals.
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The state approved Prime Healthcare Foundation’s acquisition of the Maine health system earlier this year, but with the condition that CMMC must regain full trauma status by 2028. The hospital was also required to obtain a trauma manager — the person who leads the center and communicates with other hospitals ― by Oct. 2.
Hammes said on Oct. 6 that CMMC had made an offer to a candidate for the trauma manager position but that “hiring has not yet been completed.” The department, she said, “will be closely monitoring the outcome of the offer to assess compliance with the condition.”
On Thursday, she said the state had not received an update about the status of the offer and could not verify compliance.
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A CMMC spokesperson has not responded to questions about the trauma manager requirement.
“We should be one of three trauma hospitals in the state, and from every indication, Prime doesn’t seem like they want that responsibility,” McCabe said. “I think our community is going to be, frankly, in danger if they are not able to adequately staff the emergency department, which provides life or death care, because they are in a financial entanglement with BlueWater.”
“We have many ER physicians who are very knowledgeable and interested in the care of trauma patients,” the BlueWater physician said. “I hope that there isn’t decreased momentum to gaining the level three trauma designation due to the departure of ER physicians who were ready and willing to be participatory in that process.”
Oct. 25 will mark the first anniversary of the Lewiston mass shooting, which left 18 dead and more than a dozen wounded on a Wednesday night three years ago, without a trauma center in the city.
“On that night and in the days that followed, our teams demonstrated the critical role our hospitals and emergency services play in this community,” a CMMC spokesperson said. “We remain deeply proud of the extraordinary care they provided and mindful of our responsibility to be here for our communities every day.”
But that night, it was trauma manager Tammy Lachance who made the call to secure blood from nearby hospitals, which “contributed in great measure to the survival of our operative patients,” said Dr. Richard King, a former CMMC trauma surgeon who responded to the emergency department within minutes of the shooting, along with 30 other surgeons.
Lachance died after a battle with cancer last year. King hopes she is honored at CMMC this week.
It pains him to see the degradation of the trauma program they built, he said.
“Tammy was more than that one night,” King said. “She was the heart and soul of that trauma program for many years.”
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Hannah Kaufman covers health and access to care in central and western Maine. She is on the first health reporting team at the Maine Trust for Local News, looking at state and federal changes through the. More by Hannah Kaufman
