CARIBOU, Maine — Cary Medical Center will use more than $800,000 in federal grant money to connect 10 Maine hospitals in five counties in a health collaborative aimed at improving rural health services.
Staff with the 10 hospitals that serve about a quarter million people from Bangor to Fort Kent have been meeting with each other for about two years discussing possible collaborative strategies and began working on the grant just over a year ago, according to Kris Doody, chief executive officer at Cary Medical Center, which is administering the grant.
The hospitals are looking at creative ways to work together addressing an aging, rural population and increases in chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure and diabetes and connecting patients in remote areas to health services.
The $848,478 U.S. Health and Human Resources’ Network Development Grant will support the development of a Rural Health Innovation Network, Doody said in a statement issued for release Wednesday morning.
The grant, she said, earmarks $100,000 to fund a pilot project using remote patient monitoring and virtual office visits in which patients and health care workers are linked through real time video technology.
“These are novel, innovative concepts,” Doody said. “We believe the possibilities are only limited by our imagination.”
The three-year grant award involves Cary Medical Center, Northern Maine Medical Center, Houlton Regional Hospital, Millinocket Regional Hospital, St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln, Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor, Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft, Calais Regional Hospital and Down East Community Hospital in Machias.
All 10 hospitals, said Doody, face many of the same challenges.
“All of us as hospitals delivering services in rural Maine are dealing with shrinking reimbursement, challenges in physician recruitment, high technology and labor costs and a rapidly aging population,” she said. “By working together we can share ideas, programs and services to the benefit of our patients and the communities we serve while preserving our own unique organizational culture and local control.”
Cary Medical Center is serving as the grant administrator due to previous federal grant experience, Doody said.
Though spread out geographically, people served by the 10 hospitals represent 19 percent of the state’s population, according to Doody.
“We are talking about just shy of a quarter million people,” she said. “We felt that by coming together we could have a huge impact on rural Maine health care.”
Rural hospitals, according to St. Joseph Hospital CEO Mary Prybylo, are crucial to the country’s health care system.
“Rural health care is a mainstay for providing high quality health care in the U.S.,” she said. “As a community hospital St Joseph Healthcare is excited about collaborating with this network which will help to support quality care at the local level.”
Peter Sirois, CEO at Northern Maine Medical Center, said that the strength of the rural health initiative lies within the confidence and trust that has been built over time through many years of the hospitals working together.
“Our rural hospitals have always been innovative,” said Sirois. “We have had to be in order to charter a successful course through the ever-changing health care industry [and] over the years many of us have worked together to solve problems and improve both quality and efficiency.”
Throughout the three-year life of the grant, representatives from each hospital’s medical, administrative, case management and education teams will meet monthly to share ideas, talk strategies and put plans into action, Doody said.
“Some of these ideas could become models for the nation,” she said.
