Adapting to Meet Community Need
Ainsley Price, a physician assistant at MaineHealth Primary Care Family Medicine Belfast, helped set up the practice’s Healthy Lifestyle program, which treats patients with obesity by supporting them in improving their overall health. Pictured here, Price gives a presentation to providers and care team members about treating obesity at MaineHealth Waldo Hospital.
Adapting to Meet Community Need
Ainsley Price, a physician assistant at MaineHealth Primary Care Family Medicine Belfast, helped set up the practice’s Healthy Lifestyle program, which treats patients with obesity by supporting them in improving their overall health. Pictured here, Price gives a presentation to providers and care team members about treating obesity at MaineHealth Waldo Hospital.
In an ever-shifting health care landscape, it’s essential that hospitals continuously adapt and expand their offerings to meet the current needs of their patients and communities.
That opportunity arose for MaineHealth Pen Bay and Waldo Hospitals last year. Limited access to procedure space on the MaineHealth Pen Bay campus made it challenging for the interventional pain management program there to meet patient demand, while those same barriers did not exist on the Maine Health Waldo Campus. Ultimately, the solution was a decision to perform all the interventional pain procedures on the MaineHealth Waldo Campus and focus on expanding the program there.
Interventional pain management is a proven approach to disrupting chronic or severe pain where doctors perform minimally invasive medical procedures that help stop the transmission of pain signals between your nervous system and your brain.
“We saw the program at Waldo was very efficient, well-run and well-received by our patients. Expanding that program to the larger community is the right thing to do.”
– Mark Eggena, MD, PhD, MaineHealth Coastal Region Chief Medical Officer
Under the new model, providers in the physical medicine practices at both hospitals care for patients with acute or chronic pain and make referrals for interventional procedures when appropriate. Once or twice a month, providers from MaineHealth Neurosurgery and Spine in Scarborough travel to MHWH to perform the procedures, typically seeing 10 patients per day.
“When a patient is in pain, we don’t want them to have to drive two hours to have a procedure done,” said Heather Ward, MD, senior medical director for MaineHealth Waldo Hospital. “Having our colleagues come to Waldo to perform them here has been helpful, but it is disruptive to their practice and doesn’t provide enough access to our patients locally.”
Seeing the local demand for these procedures and the opportunity to provide them more frequently on the MaineHealth Waldo Campus, the hospital is in the process of recruiting an interventional pain physician who will be based on-site. This new provider will be able to perform interventional pain procedures multiple days per week, greatly increasing the number of patients who can be treated each month.
Meeting Patients Where They Are
MHWH has also grown its Healthy Lifestyle Program, which is based out of the hospital’s Family Medicine practice and treats patients with obesity by supporting them in improving their overall health.
Dr. Ward, who is board certified in obesity medicine, said for many of her patients, weight loss is an essential part of treating illness, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease and cancers. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach to weight loss, and the Healthy Lifestyle program focuses on tailoring interventions to each individual patient, meeting each person where they are and maximizing their potential for long term success.
“Too often we as clinicians tell patients that they need to ‘lose weight’ for their health yet provide little guidance or support for them in how to successfully accomplish that,” said Ainsley Price, PA-C, who worked with MaineHealth Waldo Hospital Senior Medical Director Heather Ward, MD, to set up the Healthy Lifestyle Program. “By looking at a patient’s individual environment, habits, emotions, nutrition, physical activity and medical history, we can effectively treat obesity and help patients get where they want to be.”
Patients are referred to the program for one-on-one appointments with designated providers, who use a combination of lifestyle interventions and, in many cases, medication to help patients achieve their goals.
The hospital started offering the Healthy Lifestyle program just before the COVID-19 pandemic started, but the program has really picked up momentum in the last three years. In 2024 alone, 211 new patients were referred to the program. Looking ahead, Dr. Ward said the practice is looking to add a dietitian and a social worker to the program to help patients with the behavioral health changes associated with their healthy lifestyle journey.
The Healthy Lifestyle program is open to adults aged 18 and older and requires a referral. For more information, talk to your primary care provider or call MaineHealth Primary Care Family Medicine Belfast at 207-505-4970.
MaineHealth Waldo Hospital provider Ainsley Price, PA-C, was recognized as Maine’s Physician Assistant of the Year for 2023 during the Maine Association of Physician Assistants (MEAPA) annual conference on Oct. 1.
The PA of the Year Award is presented each year by MEAPA to a Maine PA in recognition of their dedicated service to the community in which they work, and for inspiring other PAs to serve their communities. Price was nominated for her work setting up MaineHealth Waldo Hospital’s Healthy Lifestyle Program, which treats patients with obesity by supporting them in improving their overall health.