Dear Readers,

As I watched “the event” at Boothbay’s Opera House March 20, it became clear we still have a serious problem.

It seems to me it is not a healthcare problem, where lower patient visits triggered fiscal losses, as the folks from Lincoln County Healthcare explained.

It also seems not to be a hospital closure problem, one triggered by some sort of skullduggery on the part of LCH management, as some folks from the opposition community task force claim.

It is a community problem. It is a serious community problem.

Over the years, we have seen our healthcare system evolve into Lincoln County Healthcare, a body that runs St. Andrews Hospital and Miles Memorial Hospital. It is part of Maine Health, a major system that also runs Portland’s Maine Medical Center.

The LCH doctors, nurses, techs, accountants and volunteer community board members work in a system designed to provide us with healthcare. It is something that all of us will need sooner or later.

In case you haven’t noticed, our lives seem to be changing at a rapid pace. We have smartphones in our pockets that are smarter than we are. The TV set from which Walter Cronkite once delivered the news now has hundreds of channels feeding us reruns of old sitcoms, cowboy operas, so-called reality TV contests and lots of talking heads blathering political talking points.

The good news is the nation’s weather services provide photos taken from space showing us the next storm. They are getting pretty darn good at telling us which community will get hit and how hard.

Our cars get better gas mileage now and routinely last for more than 100,000 miles. Our tires no longer need to be replaced every 10,000 to 15,000 miles.   We don’t think twice when our neighbors jump on a plane and jet to the Southland or the islands for a mid-winter break.

The front pages of magazines and newspapers feature stories of medical discoveries that are conquering ailments that have plagued us since the dawn of time. The term medical miracle seems to be almost redundant. Surgeons seem to switch out their patient’s vital organs like we change light bulbs.

Here on our little finger of land that extends about 15 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, our healthcare system is changing too. Not only is it too expensive, it seems that not enough folks are coming into the emergency room.

Fewer patients mean the hospital administrators will have fewer dollars to keep the lights on and the floors swabbed. Docs and nurses are sitting around all night in the emergency department waiting for patients that don’t come in the door.

The hospital announced a series of changes last August that will turn our hospital into an urgent care clinic. They tell us it will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week providing most of the services now available in the St. Andrews emergency department.

Hospital docs, administrators and the good folks serving on the LCH board outlined a series of service changes to the Family Care Center and tell us this style of medical practice will do a better and less expensive job at keeping us out of the emergency room.

While we understand what they say they are trying to do, a great many of our friends and neighbors are skeptical, at best. They were, and are still, irate at the way the hospital brass announced the changes. They are used to being consulted, or at least informed, about decisions affecting their health, before they became set in stone.

Many of the hospital’s biggest supporters, both donors and volunteers, the same folks who pledged annual gifts and toiled in the Auxiliary’s thrift shop, feel betrayed.

In a move that is almost unheard of, the elected representatives from four towns, Southport, Boothbay Harbor, Boothbay and Edgecomb, formed a task force to raise funds and oppose the changes.

The folks who run our healthcare system are in the driver’s seat. They will make the final decision on how and in what manner, they will offer and deliver services to their customers. We all understand that. But in order to win back the community trust they once enjoyed, they will have to do a lot more than answer a few questions, explain new systems and in at least one case, insult their critics.

They must understand the community’s feeling of distrust is deep and could last for a very long time, as a longtime community member told me the other night.

If so, it will be the job of the LCH board, the resdients, not the folks on the hospital’s payroll, to make the effort needed to regain the region’s confidence. The community feels some of the professionals fumbled the ball. It is up to the board to repair the damage.

I understand one of LCH’s community board members will soon step down. Maybe it is time to put one of the task force folks on the LCH board. There are a number of bright, concerned and hard working individuals available. I urge them to consider this proposal.

In this space, a couple of weeks ago, I suggested it was time, no it was past time, for the “grownups” on both sides, to sit down together and find a way to work through this problem.

That time has come.