The Executive Council voted unanimously today to allow Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital to mange care at the state psychiatric hospital for the next three years.
The 5-0 vote hands Dartmouth-Hitchcock a $36 million state contract; for that sum it will manage the psychiatric staff at New Hampshire Hospital, where the state's most severely mentally ill patients are treated. The vote was months in the making and came slower than Dartmouth-Hitchcock would have liked.
A core group of clinical staff refused to work with Dartmouth-Hitchcock after a contract dispute; those staff were then replaced with clinicians from its main hospital campus, which temporarily reduced psychiatric beds at Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Lebanon facility. And a state review into a high-profile patient suicide is still underway.
In a statement, Dartmouth-Hitchcock CEO James Weinstein said the hospital would continue to "provide the highest-quality care to the state's most vulnerable populations."
