As Healthcare Provider Crisis Shortage Expands, Local Hospital Continues to Lead, Expand and Educate

Kogod Center ribbon cutting celebrates creating a home for visiting medical students, interns, and others

Aug 14, 2024

BAR HARBOR—Sometimes a building is more than a building. Sometimes it’s a home, and it’s a symbol of hope and progress. That’s how Mount Desert Island Hospital thinks of the Kogod Center on Main Street. The hospital held its official ribbon cutting for the Kogod Center, August 13. It is the first step in the hospital’s expansion on its main campus.

The new building provides housing and seminar space for medical education students, interns, and residents that come from places like University of Pennsylvania, Tufts, Harvard Emergency Medicine and focus on things such as obstetrics, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and surgery. The hospital broke ground on the project in August 2022.

The goal is for those students to increase their skills by their time at the hospital or Birch Bay Living Center. Their rotations might be two weeks or nine months, but many don’t just leave and never return.

“They are coming back to us,” Christina Maguire, president/CEO of MDI Hospital told the crowd at the ceremony, Tuesday.

According to a study by the University of Washington, “About 27% of all of Maine’s physicians in 2018—42% of primary care physicians, and more than half in family medicine specialties—completed a residency in Maine, which is an overall increase from 2014.”

The Kogod Center exists because of the generosity of Robert and Arlene Kogod and their family. Maquire praised the Kogod family’s “deep dedication to service and community” as being the reason that the building exists.

The Kogods’ support has been transformational, she said.

“They went on a journey with us,” Maquire said. That journey includes providing temporary homes for residents, interns, and students who now have a place to live while they learn about rural healthcare at the critical access hospital.

Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island currently have a tight housing market and the center allows those students to learn and to have shelter while doing so.

The same day as the ribbon cutting, a student came up to Maquire, she said, and said, “I can’t imagine a better experience than being at the hospital.”

That’s for a few reasons. The first is because the Kogod Center felt like a home, Maquire said.

The other reason is that it’s just steps away from the main hospital. There’s no fighting traffic for those staying there. There’s no commute. Instead, there is small town life in a place bordered by mountains and ocean. It’s a place where little things matter, Maquire said. It’s a place where you often get to know the patients you heal.

The hospital and Kogods and architect Mike Sealander and all those involved wanted the center to feel like home.

Details and interactions are the things that make a difference, make a home and make change, Maquire stressed.

And after the speeches, Maquire showed those values in quiet action as one of the people cutting the ribbon before the center paused, thinking how to navigate the few steps for the photo.

“Let’s move it. We’re going to move the ribbon,” Maquire announced quietly and then to the person before the stairs, and promptly did just that. The problem was solved. People were taken care of.

“My parents are natural born givers,” said Stuart Kogod, son of Bob and Arlene. The snipping of the ribbon is the dispensation of the family’s commitment to the hospital and to healthcare.

Since Bob had a medical incident, Stuart Kogod said, “we’ve been rubbing elbows with the amazing Chrissi Maguire and all the incredible crew” at the hospital.

He said that there is a dire local and national crisis that’s bringing a shortage of rural medical providers. The dorm and the program has created a step to remedy the crisis.

“There is currently a gaping deficiency of doctors locally and nationally who are trained in the needs particular to rural medicine,” said Stuart Kogod back in 2022 at the building’s groundbreaking. “Our MDI Hospital has taken the lead on this serious issue by piloting and now running a training program of the highest quality.”

According to a 2024 publication released by HRSA, “As of November 20, 2023, approximately 102 million people live in a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA), and 77 million people live in a dental health HPSA. A total of 167 million people, almost half of the United States, live in a mental health HPSA. In addition, the maldistribution of the health care workforce results in severe shortages in rural communities.”

Reasons for shortages include burnout and mental health, issues with job satisfaction, and aging out of the workforce. Medical school enrollment has been increasing.

The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the country will have shortages of between 20,200 and 40,400 primary care physicians between 2021 and 2036.

The shortages are worrisome, but for over a decade, the hospital has had a program in place to fight it, Maquire said.

MDI Hospital has had a medical education program since 2011 in conjunction with Penn Medicine. That urban-rural partnership has inspired others across the country. Maquire said that what the hospital has been doing has set the standard across the state and country of how rural healthcare can be approached and how it can inspire health care providers to come back to rural communities like Mount Desert Island.

It’s working she said.

“Until about four years ago, I thought the only medicine was big academic institutions,” Dr. Rebekah Villarreal said in 2022, “and then I did a rotation in a little town in Bar Harbor, Maine at MDI Hospital. For the first time, I began to wonder ‘what if’ about community medicine?”

Her ‘what if’ led her to leave Philadelphia and work at MDI. Maquire, the Kogods and others hope that the center will inspire even more to make the same choice as Villarreal.

The center houses eight students at a time. There is a dining space and conference space and gathering space. The project’s budget was approximately $3 million.

“The Kogod Center offers medical residents and students an opportunity to experience rural medicine,” said Maquire. “And it will inspire the next generation of caregivers that will come back and change the way healthcare is delivered on MDI.”