Dartmouth Health holds many impressive roles: NH’s only academic health system, the state’s largest private employer (with more than 16,000 employees, including 13,800 in NH), and its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, the #1 ranked hospital in NH by U.S. News & World Report.
But its most vital role may be as a champion of rural healthcare. Many rural hospitals across the country find themselves in dire financial straits. Both in the state and nationally, Dartmouth Health and its president and CEO, Dr. Joanne Conroy, have advocated on behalf of rural health care and the need to strengthen these vital institutions.
Dartmouth Health, the state’s largest healthcare system, keeps rural hospitals viable with more than 2,000 providers at member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead and New London, and in Vermont. “We believe by investing in these institutions we can offer more services and keep people closer to home as they receive their care,” Conroy says. “These hospitals have become stronger as members of our health system and our health system has become stronger because of these members.”
Over its 133-year history, Dartmouth Health has continued to evolve to meet the health care needs of patients. The Dartmouth Cancer Center is one of only 57 National Cancer Institutedesignated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation, and the only center in northern New England. Dartmouth Health Children’s includes the state’s only children’s hospital and has multiple outpatient locations. The system includes more than 30 clinics that provide ambulatory and specialty services, and it recently added Hampstead Hospital and Residential Treatment facility that supports children and youth needing inpatient and residential psychiatric services. It is also home to the Heart and Vascular Center, which uses surgical robots for minimally invasive mitral valve repair.
Its close relationship with the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College means Dartmouth Health helps to train nearly 400 residents and fellows annually.
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics provided more than $326 million in community benefits including financial assistance, uncompensated Medicaid costs and mental health initiatives between July 2023 and June 2024.“We are part of the fabric of every community,” Conroy says. It is little wonder that Becker’s Hospital Review named DHMC as one of the “Great Hospitals in America” for 2025.
