State Rep. Bruce MacDonald (D-Boothbay), has added his voice to the discontent surrounding impending changes at St. Andrews Hospital and Healthcare Center.
The Lincoln County Healthcare board of trustees voted July 26 to replace the hospital’s emergency room with an urgent care center and discontinue inpatient care. The MaineHealth board of trustees approved the measures Aug. 2.
Fifty St. Andrews employees will lose their jobs as a result of the changes at the facility. Lincoln County Healthcare officials say more than half of those employees will receive offers of work elsewhere in the MaineHealth system.
“A lot of people are rooted here on this peninsula and I think the offer will ring hollow for some of them,” MacDonald said in an Aug. 1 phone interview. He noted that year-round jobs with good pay and benefits are difficult to come by on the peninsula.
MacDonald also criticized Lincoln County Healthcare’s decision not to communicate with legislators or municipal officials and expressed concern about the economic impact of the decision.
The organization’s choice to keep the plan under wraps made it impossible to plan for that impact, including the direct impact on employees and the indirect impact on the community as a whole.
MacDonald said he would discuss the situation with the Dept. of Economic and Community Development.
He said good public relations sense dictates that “even if you have bad news, you should report it and maybe people will accept it better.”
Lincoln County Healthcare officials have said it would have been inappropriate to start a public dialogue prior to the trustees’ decision because of the jobs at stake.