Transcript

Hi, I’m Denise Needham, president of MaineHealth Pen Bay and Waldo Hospitals.

When I look back on 2024, I see that, together, our hospitals have accomplished so much and we have so much to be proud of.

Pen Bay received two accolades from the Leapfrog Group this year, including a Top Rural Hospital designation for 2024 and an “A” grade in the most recent Hospital Safety Grade cycle. We finished the final phase of the Pen Bay Emergency Department expansion project and opened the Rockland Health Center with more centralized access to care for our community.

At Waldo, we launched a distance learning program in partnership with Eastern Maine Community College, designed to prepare students for careers as registered nurses, and expanded our interventional pain program. The hospital also received a five-star rating for cleanliness from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, and in December we announced a partnership with Midcoast Maine Community Action to open a Belfast WIC clinic on the Waldo campus.

At both hospitals, we expanded our Community Health Worker program, designed to help community members overcome barriers to improve their health, and we continued the important work of implementing numerous workplace violence prevention initiatives to help keep our care team safe while at work. And as part of the MaineHealth system rebrand project, we stepped into our new identities as MaineHealth Pen Bay Hospital and MaineHealth Waldo Hospital.

A review of the past year would be incomplete without acknowledging the extremely difficult decision that was made to end labor and delivery services on our Waldo campus in April. That decision was the result of a months-long review of the obstetrics program that included extensive community outreach and input. And while the decision has opened exciting possibilities for the future of OB services across our service area, it was not an easy decision to make.

Sometimes the right thing to do is the hard thing; ultimately, we have an obligation to provide safe and high-quality care to our community, and I am proud to be part of an organization that prioritizes safe patient care, even when it means making a difficult choice.

As we move into 2025, I’m excited to see what our hospitals will achieve this year. No matter where the year takes us, we will continue to invest in our communities, in our care team members, and in safe, high-quality patient care, which is essential to achieving our vision of working together so our communities are the healthiest in America.