PORTLAND — Final approval was given October 24 for a plan to bring together the members of Maine’s largest healthcare system as a single not-for-profit organization.

The Corporators of MaineHealth, who are community representatives from across the system with a role overseeing the not-for-profit organization, voted at their annual meeting this week in favor of a unification plan that has been under discussion for the past two years.

The action means that as of Jan. 1, Maine Medical Center, Southern Maine Health Care, LincolnHealth, Coastal Healthcare Alliance, Western Maine Health, Franklin Community Health Network and Maine Behavioral Healthcare will all be governed by a single Board of Trustees. However, each local organization will retain a local board that will have a role in overseeing the care delivered in each community.

The organizations oversee local health systems based in Portland, Biddeford, Norway, Farmington, Belfast, Rockport and Damariscotta as well as the Spring Harbor psychiatric hospital in Westbrook. These local organizations also include a range of physician practices and other healthcare facilities across an area serving 1.1 million people. The combined entity will have approximately 19,000 employees and more than $3 billion in annual revenues.

Memorial Hospital, a MaineHealth member in North Conway, N.H., is not unifying at this time because regulatory issues in New Hampshire put the process there on a different timeline. Also, two other current MaineHealth members, NorDx Laboratories and MaineHealth Care at Home, will not be unifying due to the unique scope of services they provide as non-hospital members.

Two years ago MaineHealth members began a dialogue on how they could better leverage the strength of their system to best ensure that each community received the services it needed.

Last year, MaineHealth held community forums in every community it serves. The forums were well-attended, and the discussion was sometimes heated. Executive and volunteer leaders across the system worked to address the issue of local control by leaving in place local boards that would be committees of the larger Board of Trustees. By bring more members into the system, MaineHealth says resources will flow more easily between various parts of the healthcare system.

“But it’s more than just financial resources that can flow across the system,” said William Caron, President of MaineHealth. “Clinical and operational expertise will also flow more easily across the system. For example, unification will help us to address the shortage of physicians and other clinicians in rural areas by more easily sharing staff across the system.”

Unification will assist MaineHealth build a system of integrated care supported by a common electronic medical records system.

“We’ve already made great progress coordinating care in areas such as cardiac care, cancer care and stroke care,” said Joan Boomsma, senior vice president and chief medical officer of MaineHealth.