One of Bangor’s major health care providers announced on Friday that it has the federal funding it needs to pay its employees and will not be furloughing staff.
Penobscot Community Health Care reported on Friday that it again has access to the federal funding the agency relies on to pay its more than 800 employees and care for people of all ages, many of whom do not have access to private health insurance.
“We are happy to report the funds we were seeking are now pending in our account as of this morning,” Ted Varipatis, a spokesperson for PCHC, wrote in a statement on Friday. “Our patients will be served without interruption, and our staff will not be furloughed.”
The announcement came a few days after PCHC sounded the alarm that it couldn’t access the funding it receives from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. If the provider couldn’t access the money by the end of this week, Lori Dwyer, PCHC’s president, warned she would have to furlough up to 25 percent of the organization’s roughly 850 employees.
The agency relies on $5.6 million in federal funding annually, Dwyer said.
On Wednesday, the Health Resources and Services Administration told the office of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that funding was restored, but Varipatis said on Thursday that PCHC didn’t yet see the money in its account.
“The system is back up and running now, but users may be experiencing lags due to the high volume of requests,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a statement on Thursday.
With the money returned, Varipatis thanked Maine lawmakers for their “attention and work” on the issue that arose this week, but noted the emergency revealed “the fragility of the ground upon which PCHC walks.”
“The need to support 340B program savings, timely reimbursements and catching up with the cost of delivering care are all critical to our survival,” Varipatis said.
