“You need to hear from me on behalf of our Board of Trustees and the bishop: Labor and delivery services are a vital part of Catholic Medical Center,” Walker said.
Walker said it was Dartmouth Health’s decision to end the partnership, noting that CMC would work on “finding the right solution” in the months to come, although he didn’t specify what that would look like. He promised that CMC would find a way to continue operating its labor and delivery services now that Dartmouth Health is leaving.
Dartmouth Health confirmed that it will no longer provide labor and delivery services at Catholic Medical Center, effective July 1, 2025. Those services will be relocated to Elliot Hospital’s Birthing Center, according to Maria D. Padin, chief medical officer for Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics in southern New Hampshire.
Padin framed the move as a transition of services that would allow existing services to be expanded and strengthened, including an OB-GYN residency program to train more physicians specializing in women’s care, while maintaining care for patients in Manchester.
“As New Hampshire’s only non-profit academic health system, this strategic decision is part of our ongoing commitment to provide exceptional care and optimize resources to better serve the patients of southern New Hampshire,” said Padin in a statement, noting Dartmouth Health’s longstanding relationship with Elliot Hospital.
Patricia Furey, chief of vascular surgery and medical staff president at Catholic Medical Center, said CMC has a contract with Dartmouth Health to provide labor and delivery services, and that those services have always been contracted with outside providers.
She said it’s possible the acquisition by HCA Healthcare could have led Dartmouth Health to back out.
“Maybe they feel threatened by HCA presence in Southern New Hampshire,” she said. “It represents a different kind of competition.”
But, she said, Dartmouth Health hasn’t wavered on other contracts with CMC, such as providing ICU care. Furey said she endorses the acquisition by HCA, noting that the hospital’s finances are so bad it can no longer operate as an independent institution.
But the news did spark some concern in the audience, as the acquisition faces scrutiny by the Attorney General’s Office of Charitable Trusts before it is finalized. The office has until Dec. 24 to take a position on the proposed acquisition, according to Mary Ann Dempsey, director of charitable trusts for the attorney general’s office.
“It’s important that we put HCA on the record for their assurance to keep labor and delivery open,” said Mackenzie Nicholson, senior director of Moms Rising in New Hampshire, a group that advocates on issues important to mothers.
“Obviously they dropped a very big bombshell on us during this hearing,” she said.
Nicholson said this issue is of particular concern given the closure of labor and delivery services in Rochester in 2023, after Frisbie Memorial Hospital was acquired by HCA in 2020. Since 2000, 11 hospitals have stopped offering those services, the New Hampshire Bulletin reported.
A woman who identified herself as a former critical care nurse at Frisbie Memorial Hospital said the acquisition by HCA led to a rocky transition.
“I was the only experienced ICU trained nurse in the entire hospital,” said Laura Zercher. She said HCA didn’t follow through on its promises to rejuvenate the hospital and create a functional ICU, and described thriving departments that were reduced to a “ghost town” due to understaffing.
But Jim Jalbert, who formerly served on Frisbie Memorial Hospital’s Board of Trustees, disagreed. He said the staffing issues Zercher described stemmed from the pandemic, at a time when hospitals were under great strain, and credited HCA for not backing out on the deal on the eve of the pandemic.
“Look, it’s not a perfect world, it’s a difficult thing to do,” he said. “But was it good for the Seacoast? Yes,” he said. “Were there some (service) lines that changed? Sure… It wasn’t perfect, but there is no perfect merger.”
Amanda Gokee can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @amanda_gokee.
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