ROCKLAND — Pen Bay Healthcare and Waldo County Healthcare have been notified by the Department of Health and Human Services that the Certificate of Need was approved for the formation of a new parent company. PBH and WCH will remain separate organizations, each with their operations and medical staff.

This formal partnership allows both organizations and their medical staffs to continue to work together to develop integrated services for patient care, control the rising cost of healthcare, and improve the health of people in the communities they serve, according to a news release.

The legal name, as of Dec. 1, will be Coastal Healthcare Alliance.

Over the last year, the boards of directors, their medical staff and the community have engaged in a strategic planning process to determine local health care needs and how best to meet those needs as one organization.

Coastal Healthcare Alliance will have a unified Board of Trustees consisting of 20 members (10 from each hospital), plus both medical staff presidents, Mark Biscone, president and CEO Coastal Healthcare Alliance and Bill Caron, CEO MaineHealth.  The members represent the community at large, as well as clinicians from both hospitals.  They were mostly selected from of the current pool of Board members from Pen Bay and Waldo.  

Both Pen Bay Healthcare and Waldo County Healthcare are members of MaineHealth, based in Portland. 

Pen Bay Healthcare is a nonprofit that includes Pen Bay Medical Center, Pen Bay Physicians and Associates, Kno-Wal-Lin Home Care and Hospice, Quarry Hill Retirement Community and the Knox Center for Long Term Care. 

Waldo County Healthcare serves the healthcare needs of Waldo County residents through Waldo County General Hospital, five rural health centers, home health and hospice services, public health nursing, physicians’ offices and educational programs. 

Waldo County General Hospital is a nonprofit community hospital.