Don't Dismantle Connecticut's Office of Health Strategy

A proposed budget bill moving through the state legislature could eliminate the Office of Health Strategy by this July, and advocates in Windham are sounding the alarm about what that would mean for communities that have already watched their local hospitals shrink.

Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal, House Bill 5030, would dismantle the OHS and redistribute its functions across multiple state agencies. Under the plan, 25 of the office’s 45 staff members would transfer to the Connecticut Department of Public Health, which would also absorb the certificate of need hearing process currently run by OHS.

For Windham, that’s not a bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s a step backward into a system that already failed them.

The OHS was created after the 2015 loss of the intensive care unit at Windham Hospital, a closure that moved forward despite public hearings and thousands of postcards to the Department of Public Health. The department at that point had no statutory authority to stop Hartford Healthcare from reducing services. A year of organizing by local medical providers, nurses, community members, and elected officials including State Sen. Mae Flexer and State Rep. Susan Johnson resulted in a new oversight structure designed to give communities like Windham a seat at the table.

That history matters because it repeats. In June 2020, Hartford Healthcare unilaterally closed Windham Hospital’s 87-year-old maternity unit during the pandemic. The OHS imposed a $65,000 fine and opened a certificate of need process. More than a year later, OHS voted to block the permanent closure, finding that six of eight public health benchmarks were not met. But the unit never reopened.

What followed was a 15-month closed-door negotiation between OHS and Hartford Healthcare that ended with a permanent closure agreement and a feasibility study for a Windham Birthing Center. Advocates call the study meaningless. Without an ICU and without a local maternity unit already in place, they argue, a standalone birthing center simply is not viable.

Even so, the OHS process allowed 28 community voices to formally testify and have their testimony entered into the record. That kind of structured public access does not exist in the same form at the Department of Public Health. Windham residents say they have repeatedly felt ignored by that agency and believe transferring OHS functions there would compound the damage already done to their community.

The pattern in Windham reflects a broader concern about how large health systems exercise power in Connecticut. Hartford Healthcare has a long record in the region of promising enhanced local services while consolidating care and directing patients to facilities in Backus, Hartford, and Manchester. Certificate of need oversight exists precisely to put a check on those decisions before they become irreversible.

William Tong, Connecticut’s attorney general, has authority to weigh in on health system transactions that affect the public interest. Windham advocates are asking why the AG’s office, along with the Department of Public Health and the Office of Policy and Management, have not moved more aggressively to protect communities facing service reductions.

The legislature still has time to push back on HB 5030. The July 1 deadline is not far off, but budget negotiations tend to move in unexpected directions, especially when advocacy groups can put a specific community’s experience front and center.

The OHS was never a perfect instrument. The Windham maternity unit closure is proof of that. But the alternative, scattering health oversight responsibilities across multiple agencies with no unified accountability structure, looks a lot like the pre-2015 system that left communities with no recourse when corporate medicine made decisions for them.

Rural and smaller urban communities in Connecticut are not just policy statistics. They are places where the distance to the next hospital matters, where a closed maternity unit means longer drives during emergencies, where the absence of an ICU carries real consequences. Dismantling the office built in direct response to those consequences, without a stronger replacement structure, is a choice the state should have to justify clearly and publicly before the July deadline arrives.