Former LRGH board member seeks first-aid for hospital system

LACONIIA — Chip Broadhurst, a former LRGHealthcare board member, is launching a grassroots effort to save the health system, which starts with a full page ad this weekend.

LRGH was facing high debt and revenue problems even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced an end to profit-generating elective procedures and the furloughing of 600 employees.

Outpatient services were scaled back to create capacity for a potential surge of COVID-19 patients. The emergency department and critical care services remain open.

The health care system, which includes Lakes Region General Hospital and Franklin Regional Hospital, is hoping to find a larger partner organization, which can bring the resources that will allow it to put its financial house back in order.

The ad in The Laconia Daily Sun will also run a second time, a few days later. People can email their names and hometowns to adam@laconiadailysun.com if they wish to be added to the list of LRGH supporters.

Broadhurst explains in his ad that, despite an infusion of $5.25 million from a state emergency fund, LRGH’s hopes for survival are based on finding a partner.

“Without a partner, health care as we know it in the Lakes Region will disappear and we’ll be left with the two urgent care centers at the Belknap Mall,” he said.

“Talk to your neighbors, talk to your elected leaders, talk to your employers. Write letters to our newspapers. Call in to our radio stations. Be counted and get the word out.”

It can only help the health care system, and its search for a partner, if the community stands up in force to stress the importance of the institution and to support the providers and employees who have been furloughed, he said in an interview.

“Any partner needs to know the community supports our people and our system,” he said. “The providers need to know. Hopefully, they'll know we love them and anybody considering becoming a partner will know this is a community that cares.”

Regional hospitals across the nation have been beset by financial problems, and some have gone out of business.

Payments from government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid don’t begin to cover the costs for providing many medical services, and many of LRGH’s patients are on these programs. Other patients have no coverage.

LRGH has been seeking a partner for well over a year.

President and CEO Kevin Donovan said the system has been working diligently on efforts to find a partner. He has not revealed the names of any potential companies that might be interested.

Broadhurst said he believes LRGH will find a partner.

Bankruptcy could also be in the health care system’s future, he said.

“It will go through, as it is now, some pain in the near term to get there, and it will be awkward, because bankruptcy is always awkward,” Broadhurst said. “Despite the horrific pain we are going through and the embarrassment of what a bankruptcy will involve, we will emerge with a partner and be better for it and it will save health care in the region.

“My purpose is to get the community to pull behind our providers, with all of us stating to anyone who might be our partner that this is a community that values continuing to have health care available to it on a local basis.”

Broadhurst said he is not privy to discussions involving potential partner organizations, but said Concord Hospital is an institution that already has some ties to LRGH.

“It would be a large bite for Concord, but if you’re sitting on the Concord board, one of the things you'd love to know is that the community really cares, which is why we're doing this thing,” he said. “You’d also want to know that this thing is affordable and can continue to provide care, perhaps under a different operating model locally.”

If LRGH were to close, Concord Hospital would see a large infusion of patients from the Lakes Region in any case, he said.

“Lake’s closing would not be a good thing for Concord.”