New Hampshire Hospital plans to close brain injury unit; future care may be in another state

From The AP:

CONCORD, N.H. -- As the state moves ahead with layoffs, the closing of a New Hampshire Hospital unit means not only lost jobs for workers but new homes for some patients.

Hospital director Paula Mattis told employees Oct. 13 that a unit for brain injury patients will close by Oct. 30. Patients will be discharged or transferred, and workers will be laid off or reassigned, she said in an e-mail.

Mattis declined to comment Oct. 14, but the director of the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire said the unit's patients may have to move out of New Hampshire.

The unit's pending closure was one of the few details to emerge after state workers on Monday rejected a contract that called for 19 unpaid furlough days over two years. Gov. John Lynch, who is required under the budget passed in June to cut $25 million in labor costs, said 250 people would be laid off and another 60 reassigned to lower-paying positions.

The head of the state's largest agency, Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas, said his department - which includes the state hospital - will layoff, reassign or demote more than 150 people, according to an e-mail the state employees' obtained and shared with reporters.

A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment on the e-mail Oct. 14 and said officials would not comment on any specific programs until later this week.

"I don't know where else people will receive this care because it's the only program of its kind in the state," said Steven Wade, who was shocked to hear that the unit for brain injury patients will close.

Wade said he worries not only about the unit's current patients, but veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injuries.

"At the very time this population is returning home, the program is being eliminated," he said.

Though the unit has only a small number of beds, the need for such services is great, Wade said. If the hospital didn't have such strict admission rules, "people would be lined up at the door," he said.

A Unity woman whose son once lived in the unit said she had no where else to turn.

Lucille Cook's son, James, suffered brain damage at birth when doctors used forceps to deliver him. He was 44 when he died in August, about a year and a half after moving to the hospital from a group home.

"The reason he was at the (brain injury unit) was that there was no other place for him to go," Cook, 65, said Wednesday. "Every time we'd bring him to a regular hospital, they just couldn't deal with him."

As her son grew ill with pancreatic problems, the hospital staff began looking for an intensive care nursing home, but no place would take him, Cook said.

Cook said there were between six and eight patients on the unit during the time her son was there. She had nothing but praise for the unit's staff.

"There's just so little help available for these people. It's unreal. It's just unreal," she said. "It makes me very sad."

According to union officials, so far there have been eight layoffs at the state's nursing home for mentally ill or developmentally disabled elderly adults, three at the state veteran's home and seven at the department of revenue.

The union also said it has heard about a small number of layoffs at other state agencies, including the agriculture, information technology and treasury departments.