Our governor’s budget bill, HB 5030, is urging our 2026 legislators to dismantle the Office of Health Strategy by July 1, 2026  and return to a multi-agency approach to achieving equitable access to healthcare across the state. 

Connecticut’s citizens – including those in the more rural areas – deserve a system that protects them from the excesses of corporate medicine.  

Under this bill, the CT Department of Public Health is currently to be assigned 25 of the 45 staff of the OHS when it is dismantled.   Certificate of need hearings — currently conducted by the OHS — are to be held there.  In Windham, we have felt unheard by the Department of Public Health and believe this effort to dissolve the OHS and transfer its work would further damage already distressed and vulnerable communities like ours. 

We note the history of Hartford Healthcare’s false promise of enhancing services close to home — all made while delivering corporate cuts and outsourcing our healthcare to Backus, Hartford and now Manchester hospitals.

The Office of Health Strategy was born after a year’s work by medical providers from all over our state. Then-Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman and our local State Rep. Susan Johnson responded to our 2015 loss of our intensive care unit at Windham Hospital. This loss occurred despite public hearings and thousands of postcards sent to the Department of Public Health to stop the closure.  Our assembly of local medical professionals, nurses, community members, town officials, nurses, State Sen. Mae Flexer and Rep. Johnson testified in solidarity that eliminating our ICU could not be done without oversight.

The Department of Public Health in 2015 had no statutory authority to stop Hartford Healthcare from decreasing medical services in our community.

Fast forward to the 2020 pandemic and closure of our 87-year-old maternity unit in June that year — unilaterally by Hartford Healthcare.  OHS imposed a modest fine of $65,000 and a certificate of need process began.   OHS voted down the closure over a year later citing that six out of eight public health benchmarks were not met, and the unit could not be closed.   We waited for the reopening of our maternity unit that did not result.

Two months later, OHS accepted a second appeal to keep the unit closed. A 15-month OHS-HHC round of closed negotiations yielded a permanent closure and a bogus Windham Birthing Center feasibility study.   Without an ICU, and a local maternity unit, a birthing center is not feasible.

Having an Office of Health Strategy allowed community voices, 28 of them, to be heard and recorded.  Perhaps we would not have had the multitude of community hospital closures had an OHS Certificate of Need process been properly in place.

We in Windham ask why our governor, the Department of Public Health, Attorney General and Office of Policy and Management have chosen to not strengthen statutory authority to prevent corporate entities like Hartford Healthcare, Prospect Medical Holdings, Trinity and Nuvance Health corporations from creating maternal and healthcare deserts in Connecticut.

Comptroller Sean Scanlon and Attorney General William Tong and State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney held two seminars open to the community about health justice, coalition building and economic prudence. Both entities are excluded from the dismantling of OHS as proposed in HB 5030. 

Tong is actively inquiring about  reductions of hospital service, including at Windham Hospital, and has solicited public input in past healthcare access matters, particularly when services are reduced or communities report harm. His office has assigned a Public Inquiry case number — PI 2502838 — for gathering information on specific problems created by the loss of access at Windham Hospital.

OHS holds the promise of healthcare restoration only if our governor and legislators prioritize establishing the statutory clout to deny any corporate hospital core service closures that are discriminatory and profit-driven.     

Relocating the duties of the OHS without healthcare access and equity enforcement in our state is a dangerous move. Legislators,  if you are not okay with too many C-section vs. natural births, rising opioid overdoses among new mothers, and births on the side of the road, parking lots and ambulances, we in Windham ask, why return to the pre-OHS era of allowing profit-driven healthcare corporations to shape our destiny without public health and government oversight?

Vote no on HB 5030.  Create bills that strengthen community health restoration and push back corporate driven consolidation and profits.

Brenda Buchbinder writes on behalf of Windham United to Save Our Healthcare, in Willimantic.