MaineHealth takes a leadership role in developing programs to improve chronic illness care in Maine through its clinical integration programs. Clinical integration is an effort to achieve a coordinated system of clinically appropriate and cost-effective care. In the clinical integration model:

• Care is provided in a coordinated way across the continuum of care.
• Care occurs in the most appropriate setting.
• Care involves caregivers from all disciplines.
• Care supports a collaborative practice among clinicians.Care improves community health status. 

Vital Network

MaineHealth Vital Network, an e-ICU, is staffed by specially trained doctors and nurses who monitor patients at nine intensive care units across Maine through a wireless remote system that includes cameras and microphones in the patients' rooms.

Vital Network offers added support to the round-the-clock staff caring for our patients. With Vital Network, patients gain another set of experts monitoring their condition. The patient's local physician is responsible for his or her care, while the Vital Network physician regularly makes "virtual" rounds and alerts the attending physician of any important changes.

The system monitors blood pressure, heart rate and rhythm, oxygen levels, lab results, medications, and x-ray results.

Simulation Lab

The Hannaford Center for Safety, Innovation and Simulation at Maine Medical Center is an 18,000-square-foot facility that brings state-of-the-art medical learning to Portland. It includes operating and trauma rooms that are identical to those at Maine Med; a skills lab, where students practice procedures such as stitching sutures or performing colonoscopies; and patient rooms, where students can build their patient communication skills and develop a patient- and family-centered bedside manner. Actors portray patients and are trained to behave or respond in specific ways during "patient exams." Only a handful of hospitals in the nation have similar facilities housed in one comprehensive location.

Maine Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine

Maine Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine have entered a true medical education partnership, one in which both parties contribute to a unique outcome that neither could achieve on its own. This historic agreement ushers in a new model of medical education.

As an affiliate hospital serving as a clinical site for undergraduate training, Maine Medical Center's past influence on educational outcomes was limited to the quality of clinical training. Today, with the establishment of MMC.TUSM, we can have a significant, and potentially national, impact on the field of medicine.

Each year, 20 of the program's undergraduate medical openings are reserved for Mainers, who also receive scholarship support. Those scholarships reduce what Maine students pay to an amount that's comparable to in-state tuition for a medical school at a public university. That's typically half of the out-of-state burden Maine students would face in another state - a savings of roughly $100,000 over four years.

The medical school's unique curriculum provides students with patient contact beginning in the first year. It also utilizes a network of clinical training sites, including in rural areas, where the physician shortage is greatest.

Electronic Medical Record

An electronic medical record is increasingly recognized as a necessary tool to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes. MaineHealth has embarked on an ambitious initiative to make this technology accessible to all the providers and patients in our communities.

Epic, one of the nation's leading information technology organizations, is MaineHealth's strategic partner in implementing the ambulatory electronic medical record. The Epic system allows healthcare providers to address a variety of information needs, and will help MaineHealth and its member organizations build strong relationships with patients, facilitate an exchange of information across episodes of care, and allow anytime/anywhere data access for physicians.