NH Union Leader – December 3, 2024
By KEVIN LANDRIGAN
Gov. Chris Sununu will urge the Executive Council Wednesday to approve a seven-year agreement for Dartmouth Health to run the state’s only mental health hospital for children, the state-owned Hampstead Hospital. The outgoing Republican governor said the proposed 138-page contract would save the state $20 million. The Department of Health and Human Services recently gave the state an estimate of $34 million to administer the facility on its own.
“This partnership with Dartmouth Health will ensure one of the country’s most prestigious health systems is taking care of New Hampshire’s kids,” Sununu said in a statement. “This is an amazing win-win opportunity that ensures world-class care while saving an estimated $20 million annually in overhead costs to the state.” Sununu has pointed to the 2022 state purchase of the privately owned Hampstead Hospital as achieving one of his overarching goals: to create a state-of-the-art mental health treatment center for those under 18. “Without this contract, the long-term stability of the state’s only mental health hospital for children is at significant risk,” Sununu said.
This deal calls for the state to lease the 89,000-square-feet of mental health for children space to the Dartmouth Health-owned Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital (MHMH) of Lebanon for an annual rent of nearly $1.2 million. This rent payment would go up by 2.5% a year over the seven-year term.
The agreement allows for up to three, five-year renewals of that contract that could extend DH’s control of the facility to 2046. The contract calls for the state to remain involved in management of services for one year after this contract is approved and to collect an administrative fee of up to $5 million.
A Joint Operating Committee made up of state and MHMH officials will oversee and make recommendations about management at Hampstead Hospital, Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver said. The Legislature has also endorsed, and the Executive Council recently approved, spending nearly $40 million to locate a replacement juvenile detention center on the grounds of Hampstead hospital. When it opens three years from now, the facility will allow the state to sell the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester that the governor has volunteered to lead in its bulldozing.
The SYSC named for Sununu’s father, former Gov. and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, is on the same grounds as the former Youth Development Center. More than 1,400 claims have been brought by former residents of both the YDC and SYSC that allege they suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse there. A bipartisan group of executive councilors previously vowed to closely scrutinize this contract once it came to them. Councilors Janet Stevens, R-Rye, and Cinde Warmington, D-Concord, have both raised concerns about the status of those employees working in the program since the state bought the facility.
In submitting the contract, Weaver sought to assure the council these workers’ needs will be addressed. Weaver said the agency will transfer “any executive or support staff” not brought into MHMH staff into other jobs in her department “as allowable under existing personnel rules.”
“Both parties (state and Dartmouth Health) also believe that it will strengthen the facility’s ability to attract, retain and train a robust workforce; Hampstead Hospital Residential Treatment Facility has a skilled and dedicated workforce and Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital will offer positions to the workforce in accordance with the terms of the agreement,” she said in a letter to the council.
In 2022, the council approved a no-bid, $52 million contract with Wellpath to manage Hampstead, despite complaints from some New Hampshire stakeholders about past controversies regarding Wellpath’s management of other programs outside the state. When the two-year pact ended, the council dropped Wellpath after Stevens and local first responders repeatedly complained about the provider’s response in dealing with juveniles who had become violent there. “This is a 138-page contract released on a holiday weekend; seven days (including Thanksgiving) to review a seven-year contract just isn’t enough time,” state Rep. Erica Layon, R-Derry, vice chairman of the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee posted on X. “Table it on Wednesday and take it up at the final meeting Dec. 18th.”
Layon said she’s filed legislation for the 2025 session to make all Hampstead Hospital workers state employees. “We should have a vibrant discussion of state-owned/state-operated, state-owned/private-operated or privately owned and operated models,” Layon added. “Signing a 9-day-old, seven-year contract on Wednesday prevents that conversation.” But she said the state needs to act since the temporary staffing authority ends without further action next June 30.