Attorney General’s Office taps retired judge to monitor North Country Healthcare

This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. June 23 to add a statement from North Country Healthcare CEO Tom Mee.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella announced Tuesday he’s selected retired Circuit Court Administrative Judge David D. King to serve as a governance consultant for North Country Healthcare, a nonprofit hospital system in Coös County that was the subject of a recent review from his office.

Late last year, the Charitable Trusts Unit, a team within the Attorney General’s Office responsible for approving hospital mergers, launched a review into North Country Healthcare and whether it was abiding by the 2016 affiliation agreement that allowed the three hospitals within its system to merge. The review, inspired by complaints from an organized group of Weeks Medical Center patients, examined, among other things, whether boards of directors at affiliate hospitals were being improperly overridden by executives at the parent company.

Earlier this month, the unit released its findings. It determined the system breached its fiduciary duties when it fired Weeks Medical Center President Michael Lee and failed to recruit a full-time replacement. (Lee declined to speak with the Bulletin for this story because he signed a non-disclosure agreement when he left the hospital system.) It also cited North Country Healthcare for what it described as communications failures during the system’s growing tensions with community members over recent months. However, besides Lee’s termination, the unit said it “did not find legal violations as to the other issues reviewed.”

In the report, the Charitable Trusts Unit announced an agreement with North Country Healthcare that requires it to cooperate with and pay for an independent board governance consultant selected by the attorney general. North Country Healthcare is also required to provide all board members with annual training on their duties as board members and hold off on any board governance restructuring plans, among other things.

King grew up in Colebrook, where Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital is based. He served as presiding judge of the Coös County Probate Court from 1990 through 2007 and on the board of Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital. He will oversee training and recruitment of new directors, attend board meetings, and write quarterly reports which will be made public, per the agreement.

North Country Healthcare was formed through the merger of Androscoggin Valley Hospital, Weeks Medical Center, Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital, and Littleton Regional Healthcare (though Littleton Regional ultimately pulled out) in 2016. The system was hailed as a first-of-its-kind model where each affiliate hospital maintains some independence with its own board of directors. Community members and former executives have been concerned that North Country Healthcare was abandoning that model. The Charitable Trusts Unit is working to ensure it doesn’t.