Nightingale wins confirmation for seat on FAME board

Gov. Paul LePage recently nominated and the Legislature subsequently confirmed Tim Nightingale to the commercial lender seat on the Finance Authority of Maine board of directors.

With over 35 years of commercial banking industry experience, Nightingale is executive vice president and senior loan officer at Camden National Bank.

Established in 1983, FAME is the state’s business and higher education finance agency that supports the startup, expansion and growth plans of Maine’s business community, as well as college savings, loans, grants and financial education for Maine students. The agency helps to lead the creation of good-paying jobs throughout the state by acting as a nexus between economic and workforce development. FAME works closely with the lending community to improve potential business owners’ access to capital.

Nightingale leads the Commercial Banking Group at Camden National, which consists of 23 commercial lenders located in 12 lending centers throughout Maine and New Hampshire. He previously served two terms as a Maine Technology Institute board member and over 10 years on the Eastern Maine Development Corp.’s Finance Committee and FAME’s Lenders Advisory Group.

Monthly pain clinic available at Franklin Memorial

Dr. Peter Marshall provides a monthly pain clinic Wednesdays on the Day Surgery Unit at Franklin Memorial Hospital through a specialty service partnership with New England Sport & Spine based in Manchester, according to a news release from the Farmington hospital.

Marshall is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Anesthesiology and the American Board of Pain Medicine. He joined New England Sport & Spine in May 2016 providing interventional pain management services.

Marshall received his medical degree at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, followed by an internal medicine residency and an anesthesiology residency at Hartford Hospital. Before joining New England Sport & Spine, Marshall provided anesthesia services at Eastern Maine Medical Center and served as clinical director of EMMC Pain Services.

At FMH, Marshall will provide services such as epidural steroid injections, nerve blocks, trigger point injections, SI joint injections and regional IV blocks for complex regional pain syndrome.

A referral from a physician is required. For details, contact New England Sport & Spine at 622-4500.

MaineGeneral receives top hospital safety grade

MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta has earned the top grade of “A” on the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade. The grade uses 30 measures of publicly available data on patient safety and quality, taking into account medical error prevention and reduction of readmissions and infections, among other aspects of patient care, according to a medical center news release.

“We’ve made great strides and will continue to seek to provide the highest level of care and safety. The A grade from The Leapfrog Group recognizes these efforts, and is a great achievement by our entire staff,” said Chuck Hays, president and CEO of MaineGeneral Health, in the release.

“Hospitals that earn top marks nationally in the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade have achieved the highest safety standards in the country,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, in the release. “That takes commitment from every member of the hospital staff, who all deserve thanks and congratulations when their hospitals achieve an ‘A’ Safety Grade.”

Full results can be found atwww.hospitalsafetygrade.org.

Inland Hospital, EMMC hosting medical students in pilot program

Eastern Maine Medical Center is participating in training future physicians from The Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont’s class of 2019 as part of a pilot program for a longitudinal integrated clerkship.

With oversight from Eastern Maine Medical Center cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Felix Hernandez, medical students Meg Klepack, Brendan Kinsley and Julia McGinty are working for a full year with primary care practices based at Inland Hospital in Waterville and Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where each will follow a group of patients as they navigate the health care system.

The clerkship training emphasizes the basic principles of clinical medicine, including primary and preventive care while building clinical skills through daily care of patients within different medical specialties in both outpatient and hospital environments. The clerkship model allows students to meet the objectives of each clinical specialty rotation in a longitudinal manner, rather than in the traditional block clerkship schedule in which they would move from specialty to specialty every four to six weeks. The curriculum shares the same core educational objectives, course requirements and similar instructional and evaluation methods as students completing block clerkships.

Hernandez is the clerkship site director at Eastern Maine Medical Center and a clinical assistant professor of surgery at the Larner College of Medicine. He has been collaborating with the curricular team at the Larner College of Medicine to develop the curriculum for a Rural Health Track pilot. Working under faculty physicians as their mentors, the medical students will follow a panel of patients through the year as they interact with all aspects of the medical system, caring for them both in and out of the hospital setting.

Klepack will complete a clerkship in Waterville. Kinsley and McGinty will go to Bangor.

Bangor Savings helps LifeFlight with money for new helicopters

Bangor Savings Bank has invested $75,000 in LifeFlight of Maine to ensure that Mainers have access to critical care and medical transport when needed, according to a news release from the bank.

The grant will go toward replacing LifeFlight of Maine’s two original 2004 helicopters with new aircraft that have “next generation” capabilities.

LifeFlight is the only air rescue and transport organization serving Maine. Since 1998, more than 20,000 patients have been transported safely by LifeFlight.

With flight time adding up and aviation technology continually evolving, LifeFlight is looking ahead to the day when those aircraft will need to be replaced. The organization is starting a fundraising campaign to amass $8 million of the $13 million needed to buy the new aircraft.

Kennebec Savings Bank gets five-star rating

Kennebec Savings Bank again has received a five-star rating from BauerFinancial, the nation’s leading independent bank rating firm, according to a news release from the bank.

This rating is based on the bank’s fourth-quarter performance in 2016.

The bank has received that rating for the past 109 consecutive quarters. According to BauerFinancial, only 4.2 percent of the nation’s banks have achieved the rating continuously for more than 27 years. Under the rating system, five stars achieve a Superior Rating and means that Kennebec Savings Bank is on BauerFinancial’s Recommended Report.

Established in 1983, BauerFinancial, Inc. analyzes and reports on the financial condition of the nation’s banks and credit unions. Each bank and credit union is required to file a detailed financial report with its government regulators. BauerFinancial obtains the raw data from the federal government and analyzes it completely and independently, supplementing it with additional research and historical data. Upon completion of the analysis, assignment of a star-rating takes place. Star ratings range from zero stars to five stars, with five being the highest. Banks and credit unions do not pay for the service, nor do they have the option of not being rated. All banks and credit unions are rated by Bauer.

The five-star rating system, which BauerFinancial introduced in 1988, is recognized nationally as “the bank rating system.” Bauer provides the ratings free through its website as a consumer service.

Compiled from contributed releases.