SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Maine — The Northern Light Health system will be closing its primary care medical practice in Southwest Harbor in August due to staffing issues and high overhead expenses.
The practice has been part of the coastal community since 1962, providing healthcare service to people living on Mount Desert Island.
Once the health care facility closes for good, patients will have the option to transfer to the Northern Light primary care facility in Ellsworth, which is about 30 minutes away.
Northern Light said it has offered to transfer all staff who work at the Southwest Harbor location to other facilities.
Northern Light sent NEWS CENTER Maine an official statement explaining its decision to close the facility, citing ongoing staffing challenges and high maintenance and improvement costs.
"Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital is making changes to our primary care service locations. These changes include relocating and combining our Southwest Harbor team and services with our larger primary care practice located at 32 Resort Way in Ellsworth on August 30, 2024. We are grateful that we have had the opportunity to serve our community from our Southwest Harbor location for many years. Northern Light Primary Care – Southwest Harbor will contact all patients in the practice to help them transition their care.
"Nine staff are employed at this location and all have been offered positions at Northern Light Primary Care – Ellsworth, or other locations, if they prefer.
"Because of continued staffing challenges and the high cost of facility maintenance and improvements, combining our current Southwest Harbor services with Ellsworth makes the most sense. In order to offer continued excellent high quality primary care and ancillary services to our community, moving this care is the best option."
Joe Gaetano, Northern Light's vice president of operations at Blue Hill and Maine Coast Hospitals, said the decision was difficult to make, explaining that he and a senior leadership team made up of providers and healthcare professionals heavily considered how closing the practice would impact patients.
"Patients are at the core of everything we do," Gaetano said. "There were tears shed among many around making this decision."
He explained that he and others from Northern Light deeply care about the community, and they prioritize offering patients with the highest level of care. In order to do that, Gaetano said Northern Light must position its medical practices in areas that allows the healthcare system to maximize its resources and serve the most people.
According to Gaetano, the Southwest Harbor location serves roughly 1,600 patients, and there are only two healthcare providers on staff. If one provider calls out sick, goes on vacation, or has to take a planned or unexpected day off, staffing is immediately forced to operate at 50 percent, making it more difficult for patients to receive the care that they need.
The Ellsworth location serves some 13,000 patients, and there are 10 healthcare providers who can respond to patient's needs.
Northern Light's Ellsworth location also has longer hours during the day and offers weekend appointments.
Gaetano said rural communities are often underserved, making access to healthcare in rural Maine extremely limited.
He also explained that much of the staff who work at the Southwest Harbor location commute far distances to get to work due to limited access to affordable housing on the island. Because the island is close to Acadia National Park, much of the housing is used for Airbnb's and short-term rentals, causing a challenge for its permanent workforce.
Southwest Harbor's island community has a large elderly population with little access to public transportation, which makes having a Northern Light medical office on the island convenient.
Town Manager Marilyn Lowell said many people even walk to their doctor's appointments.
She said that Northern Light's announcement to close the medical practice came as a surprise to many people in the community.
"I was talking to my chief police the other day, and he said for some, they will take themselves to the clinic," Lowell said. "This one person didn't feel good, and they were having a stroke. And they drove themselves because they didn't want to call in an ambulance."
Michelle Long, who works at Southwest Harbor Market in town, said she has lived in Southwest Harbor all her life, and she has been going to the Northern Light medical office since she was a baby.
"That's kind of my go-to clinic," Long said. "I knew all the receptionists. I knew all the doctors. I knew all the nurses... it's somewhere where I grew up."
She explained she sees the closure as an extreme inconvenience and said she can only hope that the health care system puts another medical office in its place.
There is one other primary care facility on the island, which a part of Mount Desert Island Hospital's healthcare system.
"Now we're going to have to go all the way to Ellsworth, which is a 30-minute drive just to go for regular doctor appointments, when the Herrick Road [location] is five minutes from work, five minutes from home," Long said.
Community members have placed a "Keep Herrick Road Medical Center" petition on tables in the Southwest Harbor Public Library.
The petition challenges Northern Light's decision to close its Southwest Harbor facility, asking how the community's needs can be met with only one medical center remaining in the area and why the healthcare system expects patients to spend more money on gas to help a large health care system like itself save money.
When NEWS CENTER Maine visited the library on Tuesday, there were 15 signatures on the petition. Many of the people who signed the petition were not Southwest Harbor Medical Center patients.
Gaetano said health care systems across the country are struggling to stay afloat while fighting against tough economic headwinds. He said Northern Light is not exempt from challenges all health care systems are facing across the county.
According to Gaetano, nationally, primary care health care systems experience an estimated $250,000 gap in revenue per physician that it employs due to high overhead costs.
"Revenue generated by an average physician in the United States today, is around $750,000 in terms of revenue generated for a health system," Gaetano said. "The cost to support and employ and support with nursing care and ancillary services around that physician and building cost is about a million dollars per physician. So, each practice, each medical group, essentially is underwater. And how we reduce that burden is by consolidating practices."
In light of challenges healthcare systems experience, people like Long who live in the small island town said they feel like they're losing a piece of home.
"I feel like this is starting to not become home... it's becoming just seasonal," Long said.