Dear Members of the Board,

I am sure this ongoing debate over UHC is growing somewhat tiresome for many of you.  Unfortunately, I must continue the dialogue.  The update below by Dr. Ripich, once again fails to respond to the most important fundamental question.  Since SMMC and Maine Health have made no promises regarding any ultimate committeement to UHC, what happens in the alternative? Moreover, Dr. Bates assures me that Dr. Ripich was given three viable alternates to salvage UHC, she choose none of them.  Instead, she unilateraly elected to close UHC.  Only after that decision was made did Dr. Bates offer to contact SMMC for their interest.  He asked Dr.  Ripich for 120 days to negotiate and achieve the best terms possible if a deal could be struck.  Rather than accept his advice, she offered 30 days to make a deal and simulatneously announced the UHC closure.  By going "public" with this position, she placed the University and Dr. Bates in the unenviable task of arranging a deal with Maine Health with their awareness that we had little left on the table to offer.  Any good business person knows that you go into a posture to strike a deal with another party without displaying your weaknesses.  Clearly this did not happen here and now Maine Health can pick and choose the best parts of UHC and dismiss the rest.  According to Dr. Bates and Dr. Pezzullo, this has left us at the mercy of Maine Health to dictate our future.  Finally, as comments flow from the community regarding the UHC closure, we cannot with any assurance make statements of how we will support our students, the Health Center or our existing patients at UHC. Understand this is not about Dr. Ripich but about the community perception of how UNE does it's business.  So far, the feedback  from outside UNE and also from within has been less than supportive.   Please reconsider the need to have a sub-committee formed now to deal with this difficult situation.

Thank you all for you continued interest,
Owen Pickus