Thu, 12/09/2021 - 09:54 pm

The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved Maine’s request for a federal COVID-19 Surge Response Team on behalf of Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Starting this coming weekend and running through Thursday, December 23, 14 federal clinicians, including physicians, nurses, and paramedics, will supplement existing staff at Maine Medical Center to provide care for those with COVID-19 and other serious medical issues.

Earlier this week, the Gov. Mills Administration requested Federal COVID-19 Surge Response Teams on behalf of two Maine hospitals – Maine Medical Center in Portland and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston – under the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 Winter Response Plan. The request on behalf of Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston is pending.

The Governor also announced yesterday that she is activating up to 75 additional members of the Maine National Guard, and, in consultation with health care systems, will be deploying them in non-clinical support roles to expand capacity at hospitals.

Maine and the rest of New England are currently experiencing record hospitalizations during a sustained surge of COVID-19 driven almost entirely by the Delta variant. The majority of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Maine are not fully vaccinated. As of today, there are a near record high 373 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Maine, including 118 in critical care and 60 on ventilators. There are currently 34 available intensive care unit (ICU) beds in Maine.

The Mills Administration has also expanded other support for hospitals to manage the increase of COVID-19 patients, including providing additional flexibility for acute-care hospitals to use Critical Access Hospitals to alleviate capacity constraints and enlisting the Maine Responds Emergency Health Volunteer System that organizes health care, public health, and emergency response volunteers to respond to emergency situations.

These steps come in addition to the Governor providing $60 million in Medicaid temporary rate increases in 2020, $40 million in one-time payments to hospitals, nursing homes, and behavioral health providers in the summer of 2021, and $146 million from the biennial budget last month in one-time COVID-19 supplemental payments to hospitals and nursing facilities to support their staff and patient care.