ROCKLAND – The nonprofit health care umbrella company Northeast Health Inc. will take over Mid-Coast Mental Health, officials from both organizations announced Tuesday.

Northeast Health runs Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Kno-Wal-Lin Home Care and Hospice, Penobscot Bay Physicians & Associates, Quarry Hill and the Knox Center for Long-Term Care.

Mid-Coast Mental Health runs outpatient and residential mental health treatment and services in nine offices and residential sites in Knox and Waldo counties.

Mid-Coast also provides a crisis team to respond to mental health emergencies in both counties. Its main office is on Union Street in Rockland.

The organizations have set a target date of Nov. 1 to have Mid-Coast folded into NEH.

The two organizations began discussing a possible deal in January. The boards of both organizations approved the move last week.

NEH President Roy Hitchings and Dan Bennett, executive director of Mid-Coast, said at a news conference Tuesday that both organizations have been working together to serve their mutual patients.

Both officials said clients will notice little difference with the acquisition.

By joining NEH, Mid-Coast will be more closely linked with Penobscot Bay Medical Center’s inpatient psychiatric services and its Psychiatric and Addictions Recovery Center, as well as with NEH’s substance abuse program Choice Skyward.

“A year ago we entered a strategic planning process,” Bennett said, with board and staff studying Mid-Coast’s future.

The task force concluded, “We cannot do this alone,” and that “there are other strong organizations that we can team up with,” he said.

Office, financial and treatment efficiencies are expected, Hitchings and Bennett said.

No staff reductions are anticipated as a result of the acquisition, although $150,000 is expected in annual savings, mostly attributed to reduced insurance costs.

“We serve a lot of the same patients,” Hitchings said, but the organizations do not offer the same services.

NEH employs 1,300 and has an annual budget of $100 million. Mid-Coast employs about 170 people, with an annual budget of $8.5 million.

“We will now be one system,” in planning, setting up clinical models, and reaching out to other organizations with similar missions, Hitchings said.

“It’s not easy sometimes to bring different health care organizations together,” he said, because worries about turf often dominate.

In this instance, he said, the 40-plus-year-old Mid-Coast and NEH, components of which date back over 100 years, “are coming together for the good of the community.”