July 2021 Calais – July 1, 2021, marks the day that Calais Regional Hospital transitioned out of bankruptcy and became Calais Community Hospital (CCH). To commemorate the day and celebrate new beginnings, CCH staff members were treated to pizza and ice cream; many sported their “Two Hospitals, One Team, One Focus” t-shirts.
DECH and CCH, President & CEO, Steve Lail, “It feels really good to officially bring Calais Community Hospital and all its staff into the fold and we look forward to many years of service to the community. We have all worked hard these last two months putting things into place to ensure we maintain some solid footing. We had to make some difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions along the way. These decisions were not made lightly but were needed to maintain core operations, to become sustainable, and to work towards being a stable organization. Our plans for the facility remain the same as they were when we began this endeavor. We want Calais to have a fully functioning hospital and want to bring back full-time general surgery, add primary care providers, and eventually bring additional specialties that will benefit all of Washington County. The hospital still does not earn enough patient revenue to pay its operating expenses, so the work to get the hospital on solid ground will continue. We all need to work together to stabilize this hospital and make our new mini healthcare system financially strong. It will take time to get us to that point but once we stabilize, we hope to rebuild bigger and better than before.”
Down East Community Hospital, through an affiliated entity and with the cooperation of many of the creditors of Calais Regional Hospital, acquired substantially all the assets of CRH. The petition to acquire the hospital was filed with the bankruptcy court on February 19, 2021; it was approved by bankruptcy judge presiding over the chapter 11 bankruptcy case of CRH on March 24, 2021.
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