A court-appointed watchdog is now overseeing the care of patients at Calais Regional Hospital as part of the hospital’s ongoing chapter 11 bankruptcy process, fox23maine.com reported. A bankruptcy judge agreed to appoint the patient care ombudsman earlier this month after Maine state health officials raised alarm about the Down East hospital’s competence to handle the spread of the coronavirus and to properly document patient outcomes. In court paperwork, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services highlighted a Feb. 15 case in which an ER doctor employed by an outside staffing agency was unable to insert a breathing tube down the throat of a patient whose windpipe was obstructed. Instead, the hospital had to call in local paramedics to intubate the patient, who ultimately recovered after being airlifted to a Bangor hospital for further treatment. Among the responsibilities of the new watchdog will be to review the role of Envision Physician Services, the Tennessee-based company that took over the staffing of the emergency room at Calais Regional Hospital on Feb. 1. The unionized nurses, medical lab scientists and technologists at Calais Regional Hospital have “strongly supported” the appointment of a patient care ombudsman, according to Todd Ricker, a labor representative for the Maine State Nurses Association, the statewide affiliate of the national organization that represents those workers.
