Northern Light Inland Hospital shown Thursday at 200 Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville. Northern Light Health officials announced the hospital and its affiliated clinics will stop services May 27. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

WATERVILLE — Northern Light Inland Hospital and its affiliated clinics will stop services May 27, hospital officials announced Thursday.

Northern Light Health, the nonprofit that owns Inland Hospital, said the decision comes as a result of higher operational costs, low reimbursement rates and ongoing recruitment and retention struggles. Hospital officials finalized the closure Wednesday, Marie Vienneau, Northern Light senior vice president and regional president, said in a news conference.

“The hospital has successfully served the people of Waterville and the surrounding communities for many years, however the availability of health resources available in the community have increased over time, making current operations at Inland unsustainable,” Karen Sanborn, Northern Light’s director of public relations, said in a news release.

Providers will reach out to patients with appointments scheduled after May 27, and patients with appointments before that closure date should go, as planned. The hospital said it would support patients in transferring their care to a new provider or facility.

Vienneau said every patient of the hospital would receive a letter notifying them of the closure.

The hospital’s more than 300 full-time workers will not be guaranteed positions elsewhere in the nonprofit’s network of hospitals, but “talent teams” were already in Waterville to help begin employees’ transition, Vienneau said.

The hospital had slowly rolled back its services in the last several months. In February, the hospital announced it was consolidating outpatient services in February, including moving a primary care office from Oakland to the Inland Hospital campus. That primary care office will also close.

The consolidation process, the hospital said, was intended to “reduce the number of leased properties” and costs associated with running multiple service centers.

Northern Light Inland Hospital is shown Thursday at 200 Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville. Northern Light Health officials announced the hospital and its affiliated clinics will stop services May 27. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

“For several months, Northern Light Health hospitals and services have been updating operational and service models to reduce overhead costs and create efficiencies,” the hospital said in a Feb. 12 news release. “This sensitive work is designed to preserve local healthcare in the face of rising costs of doing business and stagnant reimbursement rates.”

Northern Light also paused some women’s health services in March, citing ongoing recruiting challenges for obstetricians and gynecologists. As recently as March 1, the hospital said it was still recruiting OB/GYN providers and hoped to “resume offering Women’s Health services in the future.”

The suspension left Waterville with no birthing services. The nearest hospitals with birthing services are Redington-Fairview Hospital in Skowhegan, at 18 miles away, and the MaineGeneral Health Alfond Center for Health in Augusta, at 16 miles away.

Northern Light, though, said Thursday in a news release that “Waterville and the surrounding communities are within close proximity to a number of healthcare options,” and that the decision to close the Inland Hospital allows the nonprofit to direct its resources to other areas of the state, “where access to care is more limited.”

Vienneau said she believes the hospital’s experience over the past several weeks transferring patients to MaineGeneral in Augusta for OB/GYN services will help smoothen the transition period while the hospital’s hundreds of other patients seek ongoing care.

Northern Light, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, operates 10 hospitals across Maine, primarily in rural areas. The Inland Hospital has been a member of the Northern Light Health group since 1998, and often partners with its sister hospital, the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Inland Hospital was founded in 1943.

Northern Light’s recent financial situation is dire. The nonprofit ran a deficit of about $52 million during its 2022 fiscal year — the most recent year for which public data was available — and lost nearly $100 million the year before.

At the Inland Hospital alone, Vienneau said, Northern Light was losing up to $1.5 million per month on operational costs.

“This move is certainly one that will help the financial losses that we’re experiencing across our system,” Vienneau said. “It will not resolve everything, but this is just one of those difficult decisions that had to be made in order to sustain health care in the very rural areas of Maine that we provide care.”

A resource page for patients said the nonprofit plans to put the 36-acre campus up for sale, and said they will “ensure the grounds and building are maintained while we steward the sale of the property, with consideration to community needs.”

Vienneau said Northern Light hopes to sell the property to another health care provider to occupy the building in the future, and that the nonprofit hopes to hold “community conversations” about what kind of provider might be best suited for the space. She said there was no set timeline yet for the sale.

For now, Northern Light does not plan to close any of its other hospitals. The closure does not apply to the Northern Light Continuing Care facility, which is also in Waterville.