Northern Light Health’s new president and CEO said he has no plans to make cuts to staff or services as he takes the helm this month.

Guy Hudson, who has worked as a pediatric urologist and served in executive health roles, is stepping into his role on the heels of facility closures and financial difficulties for Northern Light Health. The system shuttered Waterville’s Northern Light Inland Hospital in June, and, according to its 2024 annual report, lost $156 million last year.

Hudson said the system is now doing “better than that.”

“We’re going to end the year in much better footing than we were a year ago,” Hudson said in an interview with the Morning Sentinel on Monday. “And I expect that next year we will end the year globally in better footing than we are now.”

Hudson succeeds Tim Dentry, who announced his retirement this year. Hudson previously served as CEO of Swedish Health Services in Washington and was chief executive of Providence’s North Division, a health system covering Alaska and Washington that cares for rural communities.

He said those experiences have shown him the importance of providing health care in rural areas.

“It’s who I am. It’s the environment that I like to live in,” Hudson said. “Rural health care is how I grew up and what I appreciate, and I think in some areas is an undervalued mainstay of how people stay healthy in communities.”

Northern Light Health operates nine hospitals and more than 100 health care facilities across Maine. It employs around 10,000 people across the system after staffing cuts that leaders said in September would reduce the workforce by 300 employees.

Hudson said Monday the system is actively hiring primary care and specialty physicians, nurses and other support staff.

“We have a hiring plan,” Hudson said. “We’re bringing physicians in, as well as people that we need to support that practice.”

“It’s one thing to do adjustments,” he added. “But we are not on a hiring freeze.”

The closure of Inland Hospital in June resulted in 309 layoffs and left Waterville-area patients with less access to primary care, specialty services and emergency care. More recently, Northern Light Health announced it was closing its Waterville walk-in clinic that had stayed open past the hospital’s closure to provide patients with nonemergency care.

Hudson said closing facilities is more than a fiscal decision.

“We don’t do things always to save money,” Hudson said. “We do things because there’s care that we can provide that no one else will do, care that we provide for the poor and vulnerable, care that we provide for those that can’t pay.”

President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill makes sweeping cuts to Medicaid that health leaders say will cause more people to become uninsured and will worsen the precarious financial health of Maine’s hospitals.

National research reports have flagged several rural hospitals as being at risk of closing from the cuts, including Northern Light Maine Coast in Ellsworth and Northern Light A.R. Gould in Presque Isle. Hudson said Monday that closures are “not in the plan right now.”

Hudson said he is confident Maine’s elected officials will inform the Trump administration about the challenges facing rural health care and the importance of serving rural patients.

Hudson expects Northern Light Health to continue its longstanding partnership with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which the health system has been in contract negotiations with for months. Anthem and Northern Light Health have not reached an agreement. The parties agreed this month to resume negotiations and keep the insurer’s patients from being out-of-network for some health care services at Northern Light.

“We want our communities to understand that we’re going to get an agreement,” Hudson said. “I think there’s a lot of unrest right now, and it’s up to us to settle that down and give confidence back to the people that rely on both of us for care.”

Hudson said he wants to restore patients’ confidence in Northern Light Health.

“There’s always going to be challenges in health care, but I don’t want people walking through our doors during some of the most stressful times of their lives to feel that, to notice that, to experience it,” Hudson said.

“We’ll deal with all the pressures that we feel, but it won’t come down to our patients.”