1 min read

I have read with interest your stories on the Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) nurses’ efforts to unionize to address the need for more staff and adequate equipment.

Having been admitted as a patient on multiple occasions, I witnessed the lack of adequate staff in both the emergency room and the cardiac ward. More than once I was made to sit hours in pain in a packed emergency room. On two other occasions, I was treated in the hallway of the ER. On another occasion, I got a room in the cardiac ward, but there was no in-house cardiologist and I was discharged with no idea what was causing my high blood pressure and heart attack symptoms.

It appears to me that the Prime Healthcare Foundation has all the makings of another private equity firm that travels the country buying up distressed companies, firing their CEOs and paying themselves, cutting staff and equipment, replacing staff with temporary traveling workers, then allowing the companies to go bankrupt and sell them for more than what they paid for them.

Lewiston needs to take back its hospital.

Patrick Eisenhart
Lewiston