A Brunswick-based mental health service provider says it will close its doors next month. Officials at Merrymeeting Behavioral Health Associates are blaming a cut in state MaineCare funding.
Merrymeeting officials told Brunswick officials this week that they will lay off 170 clinical workers in the area by the end of the next month. In a letter to Sarah Brayman, who chairs the town council, Merrymeeting says the decision came after notice from the state that starting April 22, “MaineCare would no longer cover 80 percent of the community-based services provided by Merrymeeting.”
Merrymeeting officials did not reply to requests for comment, but councilor Brayman says she’s worried about its clients.
“These services are absolutely vital to a vulnerable population,” she says.
Brayman says she has heard from Merrymeeting staff that they are working to find other providers who can offer services to the company’s clients. And Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Samantha Edwards says DHHS is working toward the same goal and will work with Merrymeeting to achieve it, but declined further comment on the situation.
Councilor Brayman says the pending layoffs — 30 of them based in Brunswick itself and the rest in other area communities — will be a tough hit to the local economy.
“I’m very concerned about the loss of jobs,” she says. “This is not an easy job market for Maine, and including for southern Maine and I would say especially Brunswick given that we have had the loss of the Navy base and we are still working hard to recover from that.”
Some town officials took a more optimistic view, noting that unemployment rates in the area have dropped to new lows this year.
But Merrymeeting’s decision comes at a time of great turmoil among health providers who rely on MaineCare payments, with reimbursement limits blamed for the closure of two substance abuse centers last year.
Drew Gattine, a Brunswick Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, says lawmakers should act to protect MaineCare providers.
“And make sure the department is not going to do things that are going to harm people, and that’s going to result in hundreds of Maine people losing their jobs if these community agencies have to close or significantly scale back their services,” he says. “This is a really really big deal.”
Lawmakers could get a chance for a closer look at the issues Friday, when a public hearing on the peer recovery centers is scheduled.