A huge amount of money is wasted because specialized programs are not integrated with medical and general healthcare. Our experience shows collaboration is more cost effective and produces better results. Typically hospitals are governed by boards composed of community residents who help assure that institutional priorities and resources are directed at community needs. Yet at lightning speed larger regional or statewide health systems are growing, usually with a nucleus of a large medical center. It is unwise public policy to let these systems grow and diminish what little strength there is in a marketplace approach to healthcare.
Maine often lags behind the rest of the country in health developments.
We were slow to start the movement toward large health systems when the rest of the country was going full tilt in this direction. Now we are slow to restrain the growth of large system-making, even though the results nationally are not encouraging in this direction. It has been surprising that the Attorney General, State, and the insurance companies have been relatively silent as larger systems form and as hospitals augment their negotiating power through jointly linked PHOs. We anticipate that rapid growth of large systems in Maine will diminish a pluralistic marketplace and inevitability lead to heavy State regulation. This outcome would not be good public policy.