By Barbara Scott
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Cary Medical Center is experiencing a growth in patient volume and accordingly has relocated its financial services division, including patient accounts, to the Downtown Mall in Caribou, expanding space for patient services.
Aroostook Republican photo/Barb Scott
Lisa Pucci, left, travel coordinator for Cary Medical Center and Pines Health Services; and Candace Johnson, executive assistant to Galen Dickinson, Cary CFO, are shown here in the new site of Cary Patient Services, located in the Downtown Mall.
According to Cary officials the moves have occurred over the past few weeks with some 30 hospital employees moving to the new location.
Commenting on the efforts to make way for additional patient care services, Kris Doody, R.N., Cary CEO said that the moves would clear the way for the development of a new orthopedic center that will open later this year on the hospital campus.
“Over this past 18 months Cary and Pines Health Services have added 18 new health care providers,” said Doody, whose office has also moved with the hospital. “This is truly a remarkable period of growth for us and has happened thanks to the hard work of many individuals involved in the recruitment process and the quality of life here in our local communities. As these new providers establish their practices, we are drawing more and more patients and we are simply running out of room in our existing space,” Doody added, “ this is particularly true for our orthopedics program.”
Jean Pierre Michaud, M.D., orthopedic surgeon and Scott Walton, physician assistant; joined Pines Health Services and Cary Medical Center on a full time basis in January. Their practice has been temporarily located on the former surgical patient care wing in the hospital. Doody explained that plans have now been completed to relocate the orthopedic practice to a new “state of the art” facility in the lower level of the medical center, which previously held the hospital’s fiscal services, patient accounts and administration.
“We were thrilled to have Dr. Michaud and Scott join us earlier this year,” said Doody. “Dr. Michaud is a highly respected, experienced surgeon who has established a most impressive reputation in the County. His patient volume is such that more space is needed and it is our goal to create the most advanced rural orthopedic center in the nation,” Doody added.
The new orthopedic center will open in the fall of this year and will include a 2,500 square-foot expansion to the current space ultimately creating a 6,000 square-foot facility.
In addition to relocating the business office and patient accounts to downtown Caribou, the move also consolidates the billing services for Cary Medical Center and Pine Health Services. Galen Dickinson, chief financial officer at Cary stated that brining together these two separate departments is another step in improving efficiency.
“We are working very hard to better manage cost and to reduce duplicative effort by creating a more seamless approach to the management of patient accounts,” said Dickinson, who was the first hospital administrator to move his office away from the campus. The Cary CFO also said that advances in technology have also helped to strengthen the new business center.
“Pines Health Services has just recently implemented an electronic medical record system,” said Dickinson, an employee at Cary Medical Center for more than 25 years. “This is a major step forward in technology and will interface very well with Cary’s advanced digital platform. With changes in healthcare continuing to accelerate we will be very well positioned moving forward.”
Caribou City Manger Steven Buck stated that the development of the downtown Caribou space by Cary Medical Center follows a trend of creating information technology clusters in the downtown area. ‘In recent years we have seen a move to small high tech companies looking for rural locations,” said Buck. “Healthcare IT is one of the fastest growing industries and it will fit very well in our effort to bring more of these jobs to Caribou. In addition having this number of employees moving to downtown will help inject activity into our growing number of small businesses,” Buck added.
Additional moves are still being planned at the hospital as work is set to begin on the new Orthopedic Center. Doody expressed her appreciation to hospital staff that has adjusted to the new location.
“We certainly want to thank our staff who have accepted these changes in order to improve patient care and convenience. We also want to thanks all the local contractors who have helped us to make these moves in a remarkable efficient way,” said Doody. “We are dealing with a lot of growing pains right now but they are the right kinds of pain to be having.”
Cary Medical Center is leasing the downtown space with long term plans to move everyone back to the Cary Medical Center campus at a future date.
For more information regarding these activities at Cary contact the hospital’s public relations office at 498-1376.
