Brunswick hospital system opposes rival's plan for Topsham surgery center

File photo Lois Skillings, president of Mid Coast-Parkview Health in Brunswick, says plans by Central Maine Healthcare to build an outpatient surgery center in Topsham are unwarranted and will drive up health care costs for the community.

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By William Hall

Central Maine Healthcare Corp.’s proposed ambulatory surgery center in Topsham is meeting with opposition from another health care provider a few miles away.

The Lewiston-based health care system in May announced plans for a $14.2 million, 20,000-square-foot surgical center on the same site as CMH’s Topsham Care Center, at 105 Topsham Fair Mall Road. CMH has requested a certificate of need from the state in order to construct the new center, and a public hearing on the application is scheduled next week.

But Mid Coast–Parkview Health, which is based in Brunswick, said Thursday that the new center is unwarranted and potentially costly for the region.

The Topsham site would siphon off business from Midcoast-Parkview, it said in a statement, forcing the system to either cut services or charge more in order to make up lost revenue.

“On the face, it may seem like more competition would be good, but when you build unneeded, expensive new facilities that create needless overhead, what actually happens is that the overall cost of health care goes up,” Midcoast-Parkview Health President Lois Skillings said in a statement. “That’s why we have a certificate of need process in the first place.

“The bottom line is, the Topsham facility is simply not needed, and it will end up costing our community.”

The Topsham center would include four procedure rooms and two operating rooms focusing on urology, gastroenterology, orthopedics and other specialties. Department of Health and Human Services regulations require new infrastructure like that to be approved so as not to create excess capacity, which can drive up the overall cost of health care.

The proposed facility would be 7 miles from Mid Coast Hospital’s 93-bed main campus and 5 from its Parkview satellite campus. Currently, Mid Coast Hospital’s existing outpatient surgery facilities are being used at less than 50% capacity, Skillings said.

In response, Kate Carlisle, a spokeswoman for Central Maine Healthcare, said its ambulatory center would allow surgical care at half the cost of a hospital setting, and could provide savings for the community of $3 million in the first year of operation.

Local demand for care makes the additional facility necessary, according to CMH.

Carlisle said, "CMH has been providing care in the Midcoast for about 12 years, and our providers at Topsham Family Medicine and providers and partners ... at the Topsham Care Center say the need exists and is growing."

The hearing on the certificate of need application with the state has been scheduled for Wednesday, July 22, at 10 a.m. via teleconference.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include comments from Central Maine Healthcare.