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Mary Tedesco-Schneck is a pediatric nurse practitioner and a retired associate professor of nursing at the University of Maine. Her views do not reflect those of her employer or any group to which she belongs.
Penobscot Community Health Care (PCHC) CEO Lori Dwyer outlines the consequences of losing Penobscot Community Health Care as an essential provider of healthcare services in our region. She is supported in her assertions by other local healthcare leaders. They are right; the loss of PCHC will eliminate essential healthcare services for our community especially among some of our most vulnerable populations.
This will affect our entire community because individuals and families who do not have primary care services will access our healthcare system with an increased level of acuity of healthcare problems, which cost more to treat; not to mention the unnecessary human toll of suffering and potentially loss of life. Dedicated PCHC workers would lose their jobs, which affects the quality of life for these workers and can negatively impact the economy. Dwyer details the tireless efforts that PCHC has made to prevent this crisis, which include reaching out to policymakers and trimming back services.
However, one glaring factor significantly impacts the ability to provide healthcare services not only in our region but nationally and internationally — the inability to attract and retain primary care providers and healthcare workers in general; in other words, workforce development. Research on factors that contribute to the inability to attract and retain primary care providers and healthcare workers indicates that heavy caseloads, cumbersome electronic medical records, lack of available childcare for providers, and high patient acuity with a lack of subspecialty care are among some of the contributing factors. Simply providing PCHC with the requested funds to prevent bankruptcy will not address these underlying issues.
So, how do we thoughtfully tackle this problem? The burden does not rest solely on the shoulders of PCHC. There are solutions we can embrace as a community to meet these challenges by engaging with higher education, healthcare agencies, and community partners.
In 2023, the 131st Maine Legislature recognized the need to educate more physicians (one facet of the healthcare workforce) and approved LD 129, which allowed for the appropriation of funds to the University of Maine Systems to study the feasibility of a public allopathic medical school. Tripp Umbach, a nationally recognized medical education consultant, conducted the study by engaging in interviews with key stakeholders which included healthcare, higher education, and the community sector. PCHC was one of the contributing stakeholders.
The Tripp Umbach consulting group concluded that at this time creation of a public allopathic medical school is not feasible but reported that strengthening Maine’s statewide health and biomedical infrastructure over the next five years could be foundational to establishing a medical school. Investing in research, nursing, behavioral health, public health, allied health, and biomedicine and life sciences would help to build that foundation and would also require evaluating the factors that contribute to the inability to attract and retain primary care providers and healthcare workers.
Supporting PCHC during this time of financial crisis is essential. However, it should not be done without working together as a community to act on recommendations to build the health and biomedical infrastructure to create a healthy workforce.