Chia-Jung Karen Lu, MD, has joined the staff at Central Maine Surgical Associates located at 12 High Street, Suite 401 in Lewiston.
Lu completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif. She earned her medical degree at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa.
She completed her general surgery residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Ark. and a fellowship in surgical critical care at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Lu is a member of the American College of Surgeons and the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma.
“I believe in treating my patients like how I would want my own family members to be treated. Listening and keeping an open communication is the best way to connect with my patients,” said Lu of her healthcare philosophy.
Central Maine Surgical Associates is part of Central Maine Healthcare and can be reached by calling 207-795-5767.
CMH News
Central Maine Healthcare Supports Medicaid Expansion
Learn the facts about Question 2
This November, you have the opportunity to help your fellow Mainers gain access to healthcare when you vote yes on Question 2, which asks whether or not the state should expand its Medicaid health insurance program known as MaineCare.
Our mission is to improve the lives of patients and elevate the health of the communities we serve. An important part of this mission is supporting access to affordable, safe and high-quality healthcare for all. Passage of Question 2 would provide MaineCare to an additional 80,000 adults – more than half of whom are hard-working in restaurants and food service, construction, and grocery stores, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This is why we’re supporting its passage.
Who can be insured by MaineCare?
MaineCare helps children, seniors, low income families and people with disabilities the most. It provides insurance for one out of every three children in Maine, and pays for over 40 percent of births. For low-income working families, health insurance through an employer may be too expensive or not available, making MaineCare the only option for family health insurance, particularly in rural areas.
Why is this important?
For many Mainers, there’s no other viable option for health insurance coverage than MaineCare. Without coverage, thousands of people delay obtaining care. As a result, their illnesses get worse, more complex, and more difficult and expensive to treat. It also causes patients to rely more on Emergency Departments for care, an expensive, short-term fix rather than the preventive, continuous care available to patients who have their own doctor. MaineCare also pays for routine checkups, prescription drugs and hospital stays, school-based services, mental health treatment, and home health.
What’s the financial impact?
MaineCare is jointly financed by the federal government and the state. If MaineCare were expanded to additional adults, the federal government would pay up to 90 percent of the additional cost.
Expansion will provide affordable access to healthcare for uninsured Mainers. It will help reduce the bad debt patients incur when they can’t pay for the healthcare services they’ve received–costs that are frequently passed on to consumers and businesses with insurance coverage. In addition, it helps hospitals reduce charity care costs–the cost of care written off when patients can’t pay–costs that, for us, have risen 63 percent this fiscal year compared to FY 2015.
Expanding access is also good for the health of hospitals which play a critical role in their communities. Increases in charity care coupled with reductions in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements healthcare systems currently face impacts ability to invest in facilities, new technology and clinical programs needed to meet evolving healthcare needs. Healthcare is the largest source of employment in Maine, with wages that are 17 percent above the state average, but the majority of hospitals in the state are currently operating at a loss, due in part to the loss of MaineCare coverage for thousands of families over the last few years.
Expanding Medicaid is also good for the health of Maine’s economy. Because more people would have access to affordable healthcare under expansion increasing the demand for healthcare services, around $500 million would be injected into economy in the next two years and 6,000 new jobs would be created, according to the Maine Center for Economic Policy.
What we’re doing
We’re committed to working on the collective health of our communities in addition to focusing on individual patients. This way, we can reduce the cost of healthcare by identifying and preventing healthcare issues within entire communities. Almost one quarter of our rural neighbors are insured through MaineCare, compared to only 18 percent elsewhere. Because Central Maine Healthcare serves many rural communities, we’re particularly dependent on MaineCare to allow us to continue providing prevention services and primary care at community health centers.
We also realize we’re an important part of the solution. We too are evolving and leading the change in healthcare delivery in Maine by adopting a value-based healthcare delivery model based on cost, access, quality and service so that we can continue meeting the healthcare needs of our communities.
What can you do?
Support Medicaid expansion when you vote on Question 2. For thousands of Mainers, many of whom are your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers – their lives depend on it.
Dervilla McCann, M.D., FACC, MPH
Chief of Population Health
Central Maine Healthcare
Peter Leighton, M.D., Acknowledged for Patient Care by Bridgton Hospital
Bridgton Hospital presented its inaugural Larry Hopperstead Award for Excellence in Patient Care to Peter Leighton, M.D.
Nominated as “a model of a caring physician,” Leighton provides exemplary care to his patients at Bridgton Internal Medicine. Through his practice of evidence-based medicine, Leighton combines his clinical expertise with research-based evidence and his patients’ values and preferences to provide a comprehensive treatment plan for each patient. As a strong patient advocate and compassionate provider, he is able to have difficult conversations with patients, their families, and other providers, if necessary to provide high-quality, compassionate care.
Leighton also looks to the Lakes Region’s health needs to see how he can best assist his community. As a result, when the opioid epidemic made its way into the region he obtained a Suboxone waiver to provide necessary and life-altering treatment for those addicted to opioids in the region. Leighton is now known as one of the top resources in the state when it comes to Suboxone treatment in a primary care setting.
The Larry Hopperstead Award for Excellence in Patient Care is named in honor of long-time Central Maine Healthcare (CMH) surgeon Dr. Larry Hopperstead, FACS. In his tenure at CMMC, he was instrumental in creating and building the hospital’s trauma program as Trauma Director, as well as, bringing Lifeflight of Maine to the Lewiston campus. In 2011, Hopperstead joined the Rumford Hospital Surgical Associates’ staff and brought his knowledge, surgical prowess, and patient-centered care to the River Valley until his retirement earlier this year. Throughout his career, Hopperstead never forgot that treating patients and team members with respect and compassion is the foundation of high-quality healthcare.
In honor of all that Larry Hopperstead brought to CMH, providers must:
- Model altruism, competence, trustworthiness, and humility
- Receive exemplary patient and family feedback
- Demonstrate success in improving the patient experience and reducing patient and caregiver suffering
- Leighton personifies CMH’s dedication to elevating the communities it serves.
CMH Welcomes David Tupponce, M.D., Executive Vice President of CMH and President of CMMC
We are excited to welcome David Tupponce, M.D., Executive Vice President of Central Maine Healthcare and President of Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC).
Tupponce comes to CMH with an extensive clinical and administrative background. For the past five years, he served as CEO of Paradise Valley Hospital, part of Tenet Healthcare’s Abrazo Community Health Network, in Scottsdale, Arizona. His clinical background includes service as a hospitalist and family practice physician. He received a Doctor of Medicine from George Washington University and was a family medicine chief resident at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Read more about Dr. Tupponce’s in this exclusive interview by the Sun Journal.
Central Maine Healthcare adds operations leaders to hasten its transformation
Central Maine Healthcare (CMH) has added two healthcare operations executives to help position the health system as Maine’s healthcare delivery innovator.
The two new senior leaders are David Tupponce, M.D., Executive Vice President of CMH and President of Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) and Lynn Budlong, Vice President of Physician Services.
Together, Tupponce and Budlong will oversee the system’s operations and work with physicians to develop programs and set even higher standards of clinical quality and safety for CMH’s patients. The appointments further solidify CMH’s leadership roster to assist in transforming the system into the state’s first value-based healthcare provider in terms of cost, access, quality and service.
Tupponce comes to CMH with an extensive clinical and administrative background. For the past five years, he served as CEO of Paradise Valley Hospital, part of Tenet Healthcare’s Abrazo Community Health Network, in Scottsdale, Arizona. His clinical background includes service as a hospitalist and family practice physician. He received a Doctor of Medicine from George Washington University and was a family medicine chief resident at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Budlong has nearly 20 years of broad strategic leadership experience, and was most recently the Vice President, Primary Care and Strategic Business Operations at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cambridge Health Alliance. While there, she provided strategic and operational leadership for an ambulatory network of 12 primary care centers. Prior to her role at Cambridge Health Alliance, she was a consultant in the human services and healthcare sectors in the areas of new business development, strategic planning and operations management.