Penn Bay Medical Center is moving forward with plans to evolve its palliative care program.
The medical center is an affiliate of the MaineHealth system and began providing hospital-based palliative care two years ago. It has since expanded into community-based serious illness care.
The palliative growth was spurred by a two-year pilot project funded by a quality improvement grant from the Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Foundation. The grant allowed the medical center to expand its service capacity with recently hired clinical staff.
The additional layer of support is a crucial element for the medical center’s patients, it indicated in a statement.
“This complementary care also helps patients and families better manage complex symptoms before they become worse, supports increased well-being, helps to avoid unnecessary hospital visits, and provides [a] patient-centered and better coordinated plan of care aligned with patient and family wishes,” the organization said in a recent announcement.
Dr. Marjorie Zyirek-Bacon has joined the medical center as a new palliative care physician. Other recent clinical hires also included two nurse practitioners, Karin McDonald and Alana Rose. Additional palliative team members included Kim Danforth, a licensed social worker, and Brooke Simmons as its new medical assistant.
The nonprofit community hospital is based in a rural region along midcoast Maine. The medical center’s range of inpatient and outpatient continuous care includes emergency and rehabilitative services. It also offers home care and hospice through MaineHealthCare at Home, as well as inpatient hospice care at the Sussman House. It operates Pen Bay Physicians & Associates as well as the Quarry Hill Retirement Community.
All told, Penn Bay Medical Center’s clinical staff consists of 100 physicians and 1,500 health care professionals
In addition to MaineHealth, Penn Bay Medical Center is also part of the Coastal Healthcare Alliance.
MaineHealth provides preventative and diagnostic medical services, as well as behavioral and home health care. The nonprofit health system operates nine hospitals and provides care to roughly 1.1 million residents in Maine and New Hampshire through an Accountable Care Organization (ACO).
Penn Bay Medical Center initially launched its palliative care program with another MaineHealth affiliate, Waldo County General Hospital (WCGH). The two organizations first rolled out these services in 2021 at the WCGH hospital.
The program offers specialized medical care for patients of all ages with serious life-limiting illnesses. The services are provided at any stage of the patient’s illness trajectory and are offered alongside curative treatment.
Demographic trends are pushing up demand for palliative care in Maine.
Seniors 65 and older represent nearly a quarter (21.7%) of Maine’s overall population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Pine Tree State had the highest volume of seniors compared to any other state across the country in 2020, outranking only Florida and Vermont that year at 21.2% and 20.6%, respectively, the agency reported.
Seniors represent a mere tip of the iceberg of the patient populations that could benefit from expanded access to community-and hospital-based palliative care. Pediatric patients and their families are another, for example, according to the medical center.
“The palliative care teams work together with a patient’s other doctors to deliver an extra layer of support to focus on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness, and improving the quality of life for the patient and family,” according to the statement.