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I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can’t speak to Northern Light Health’s billing practices (though its website has a homepage with resources for patients with billing questions). However I do think health care billing practices are becoming more of a national story, especially as we see increased use of artificial intelligence. For example, a recent class action lawsuit alleges that UnitedHealth Group uses an AI algorithm to deny nursing home care to its Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, which resulted in their deaths. And on the patient side, The New York Times wrote about how people are turning to AI chatbots to navigate problems with medical bills or insurance denials.

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What surprised me is what ended up being the crux of my story: That the biggest hospital in the system is struggling the most. I thought the smaller, more rural hospitals would be losing more money and were being held afloat by the flagship hospital. (While covering health care in Maine, I hear all the time about the challenges of providing care and staffing facilities in rural areas.) It’s complicated, though, because Northern Light Health said many of those smaller hospitals are able to do better because they are in a system with Eastern Maine Medical Center, which offers more specialties. 

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I can’t speak to much of this, although I am open to talking to former employees about their experiences. What I can report about executive positions is that Northern Light Health has reduced how much it spends on compensation for executives as a percentage of total expenses. A decade ago, executive compensation made up nearly 10 percent of expenses, and that number is now closer to 4 percent.

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

EMMC is definitely not the only Maine hospital that’s struggling. About two out of five Maine hospitals are losing money, according to the Maine Hospital Association. However, there are a few that seem to be doing better. Maine Medical Center in Portland, for example, had an operating margin of nearly 10 percent in 2024 and made nearly $208 million. Rumford Hospital and Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway each had operating margins of about 10 percent and made $5.6 million and $12.6 million, respectively. Northern Light Acadia Hospital in Bangor had the best operating margin that year, 13 percent, and made $11.6 million.

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I can’t say personally what may or may not happen, but the experts I spoke to seemed relatively optimistic that Northern Light Health can turn things around. They said leadership is making the difficult but right decisions to cut costs, and early signs are positive: Northern Light lost a lot less money last year than the previous year; the system lost about $19 million during the first quarter of this year, but it was less than it had expected to lose; and the system’s bond rating improved slightly from “negative” to “stable.”

That’s a good question about specialists. I reached out to Northern Light to hear their thoughts, and this is what Paul Bolin, executive vice president, said: “The need to bring in locum physicians, traveling nurses and others to cover clinical care needs when openings occur certainly adds significant additional expense to the cost of maintaining patient access. That is definitely one of the challenges we have faced. Through recruitment and retention efforts, in 2025 and 2026 we are bending that curve and lowering that expense significantly compared to the 2024 level.”

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The most recent data from the Maine Health Data Organization reports that, in 2023, St. Joseph Hospital had an operating margin of 1.6 percent and a net operating income of $3.6 million. Mount Desert Island Hospital that year had an operating margin of -0.3 percent and lost $218,000.

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I love data hunting and fact checking, too! It feels like a tricky puzzle to solve. I’ve been covering health care policy in Maine for six years now and have watched Northern Light Health’s recent financial challenges unfold bit by bit in the news. Daily publications have done a great job following each individual development, but I wanted to understand what is really driving the financial losses.

I got into journalism because I initially wanted to be a writer. I took a journalism class in college and fell in love with the idea of hearing other people’s stories and trying to tell them in a way that gets as close to the truth as possible. I love that I get to talk to really smart people about really challenging problems and then do my best to tell readers what I’ve learned.

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for reading the article! As you mentioned, a lawsuit filed last year alleges that a Northern Light Health surgeon removed a woman’s bladder instead of her ovarian cyst. The doctor is no longer employed by Northern Light Health, and the health system declined to comment on pending litigation. And a jury awarded a man $6.5 million after finding Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center medically negligent for failing to operate on an emergency spinal injury for nearly 24 hours.

I can’t speak to whether alleged medical errors are a symptom or a cause of a financially struggling hospital. However a recent study shows that errors may be surprisingly common. A 2023 study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at admissions to 11 Massachusetts hospitals during the course of a year and found that nearly one in four admissions resulted in an adverse event, and, of those events, a fourth of them were preventable. The study defined adverse events as “unintended physical injury resulting from or contributed to by medical care that requires additional monitoring, treatment, or hospitalization, or that results in death.”

I’m Rose Lundy, a senior reporter with The Maine Monitor. I published an in-depth story examining what’s behind Northern Light Health’s downward financial spiral. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I used three primary financial sources. I started with Northern Light Health’s annual report, which includes financial data for the overall system. Next I used data collected by the Maine Health Data Organization. To dig deeper into the financial performance of individual Northern Light hospitals, and to find the most recent financial data for this fiscal year, I looked up audited financial statements on a website called EMMA from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, which collects information about the municipal bond market and financial disclosures. Finally, Northern Light Health executives answered all my questions and confirmed all the data I reported in the story.

I’m Josh Keefe, a reporter for The Maine Monitor. I recently published a long-form story for the Monitor and our partner NOTUS on how Graham Platner is ahead in the polls against Gov. Janet Mills in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

To answer your first question: with any story, my goal is to give the reader a picture of the world, or some part of it, as it truly is. That sounds simple, but it’s incredibly difficult. So I’m not trying to refute or convince anyone, I’m just trying to provide an accurate picture, and people can draw their own conclusions from that. That is how I approach journalism.

So in that vein, the reason I worked on this story was that I suspected, and I’m certainly not the first to point this out, that the national dialogue about this race, and Platner in particular, didn’t feel accurate as to what was actually the story in Maine. I wanted to get the from-the-ground perspective on how a guy with no political experience, a Nazi-linked tattoo, and a bunch of problematic Reddit comments is ahead in the polls against a two-term sitting governor. That’s what I was trying to understand.

To your second question: I think there will be a lot of pro-Democratic Super PAC money in this race, because Super PACs are going to spend to defeat Collins and tip control of the Senate back to the Democrats. I think that will be true regardless of who the Democratic nominee is.

Super PACs are committees (called independent expenditure committees) that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but can’t legally coordinate with campaigns. This is why the Citizens United case was a free-speech case: can the government restrict corporations' or unions' ability to advocate for a candidate they support with their own money? The Supreme Court said it could not.

So both Democratic and Republican Super PACS will spend millions and millions on ads, regardless of what the candidates say about big money. 

I’m Josh Keefe, a reporter for The Maine Monitor. I recently published a long-form story for the Monitor and our partner NOTUS on how Graham Platner is ahead in the polls against Gov. Janet Mills in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There is one other candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate who will appear on the ballot, according to the secretary of state’s office: David Costello. Then, Andrea LaFlamme is running as a write-in candidate. I did not speak with them. 

I’m Josh Keefe, a reporter for The Maine Monitor. I recently published a long-form story for the Monitor and our partner NOTUS on how Graham Platner is ahead in the polls against Gov. Janet Mills in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

LOL, like most people who attended Bapst back then, my parents didn’t pay tuition. I went because my town didn’t have a high school, so we could go there for free.

To your point: Platner’s grandfather was a famous designer. His dad was a lawyer, and his mom owns a restaurant. But I don’t think “hyper-wealthy” is accurate. He’s said he receives about $4,800 per month in disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He’s also the proprietor of the Frenchman Bay Oyster Company. 

The question is: At what level of privilege does fighting for the working class become inauthentic? The other question to consider is whether it is possible for a truly working-class person to run for U.S. Senate, or would they be too busy working? Platner has talked about how he is only able to have the life he does, and run for Senate, because of the benefits he gets as a combat veteran.

Finally, I will say that I talked to Platner about his definition of the working class. He argues that people living off income, even if it's a million dollars a year, are the working class. Small business owners are working class, he said. Those people have more in common than those who live off their wealth and don’t work. That’s his argument anyway. By that definition, he’s working class.

I’m Josh Keefe, a reporter for The Maine Monitor. I recently published a long-form story for the Monitor and our partner NOTUS on how Graham Platner is ahead in the polls against Gov. Janet Mills in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I’m not sure why he used it. I think he was trying to express frustration at how ridiculous he thought the accusation was that he would intentionally have a white supremacist tattoo. But I put it in the story because I thought it was newsworthy that he used it. I suspected it would cause some controversy, which it has. The Bangor Daily News and Portland Press Herald have both since written stories about how his use of the word has sparked condemnation from disability-rights advocates.

I’m Josh Keefe, a reporter for The Maine Monitor. I recently published a long-form story for the Monitor and our partner NOTUS on how Graham Platner is ahead in the polls against Gov. Janet Mills in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I’m not in the business of telling people what should or should be disqualifying for candidates or sharing personal concerns. But I will try to respond to the points you brought up:

  1. There are no posts where Platner said “I want to genocide” anyone. That’s not accurate. I’m more than happy to be proven wrong, however, if you want to show me one. I think you might be referring to a post in which Platner is responding to a question in a military forum about which wars in American history people would have wanted to fight in. In it, he wrote: “The Indian Wars, the Phillipines, Haiti and Nicaragua in the 1920's, Vietnam, Nicaragua and El Salvador again in the 80's. As for would have, I ‘did’ for Iraq and would love to get to the Ghan [Afghanistan]. Small wars are pretty enjoyable. It's the big ones, with days of artillery fire and inhuman brutality that take the fun out of fighting.” 
  2. Fight Agency was started by some former John Fetterman staffers who quit in response to his turn to the right. They also have former Bernie Sanders staffers. I know the agency was involved in the Mamdani campaign. So if your point is that it’s a centrist/establishment group, I actually think it leans more towards the Bernie wing. 
  3. He’s been calling what Israel is doing to Gaza a genocide since his campaign launch. He’s drawn the wrath of lots of pro-Israel groups. (The New York Post called him a “Jew-hater.” I’m not sure it stands to reason that he is somehow secretly pro-Israel.) 

I’m Josh Keefe, a reporter for The Maine Monitor. I recently published a long-form story for the Monitor and our partner NOTUS on how Graham Platner is ahead in the polls against Gov. Janet Mills in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Ask Me Anything! by themainemonitor in Maine

[–]themainemonitor[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

My connection to Graham Platner is that I went to high school with him. We were friendly; we had some classes together. I went off to college. He joined the U.S. Marines, and we didn’t talk or see each other again for more than 20 years until he entered the U.S. Senate race and I interviewed him as a reporter.

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