Dartmouth-Hitchcock Offering Early Retirement to 700+ Employees

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center with its flagship hospital in Lebanon is offering voluntary early retirement to about 725 employees across its health system. The offer will apply to certain non-clinical positions based at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) and at Community Group Practice sites in Concord, Manchester, Nashua, and Keene.

The early retirement option comes as Dartmouth-Hitchcock addresses a number of challenges important to repositioning itself for the future. Primary among those is the ability to provide high-quality care at lower cost. Recent actions by the state of New Hampshire to reduce the Medicaid reimbursement due Dartmouth-Hitchcock have only hastened the need to realign the workforce.

A key area of focus over the past several years has been to review and redesign the way we do our work, to optimize efficiencies, reduce expenses, and ensure our resources are allocated to most effectively serve our patients, said Dartmouth-Hitchcock Chief Human Resources Officer Alan Weston. We also wish to honor our dedicated employees and the essential contributions they have made over their years of service to Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the community. We're pleased to be able to offer this early retirement option as an element of our necessary restructuring and transformation efforts. Weston noted that the offer does not apply to positions that may directly impact patient care.
The election period for the early retirement option is August 15 to September 30. Employees received news of the early retirement offering August 9. Informational packets with individual-specific information will be mailed to eligible employees on or before August 15 and employees will have 45 days to respond to the offer.

The package includes an enhanced pension benefit in which retirees can take their pension payments as either a lifetime annuity or a single lump-sum payment. They will also receive an additional payment equal to six to nine months of base pay, depending on the employee's age and service with Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and be eligible for medical coverage through 2013 at the active employee contribution rate.

In the past year, Dartmouth-Hitchcock has announced a number of steps to confront budget challenges, including reducing workforce size by 300 positions, making changes in the portion of health insurance paid by employees, and imposing reductions in discretionary spending such as supply management, travel, and purchased services.
Work continues on other ways to balance Dartmouth-Hitchcock's fiscal year 2012 budget, which takes effect on October 1.