Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock closed a $5 million land deal before announcing major layoffs two months ago, according to a New Hampshire Union Leader report.
The 14 acres of land, located in Bedford, N.H., will eventually be used to build a new primary care clinic to replace D-H's existing Bedford clinic, hospital officials said in the article.
Citing online assessment records for Bedford, the report states that D-H closed on the $5 million land acquisition from the Kilton Road agency Sept. 1.
"We realized that this might be the last site in Bedford of that acreage that would accommodate a medical office building," Thomas Goins, vice president of facilities and construction management at D-H, told New Hampshire Union Leader.
The health system closed the deal days before D-H announced between 270 and 460 layoffs. The number of layoffs was later revised to 84.
But in the report, Mr. Goins chalked the timing of the layoffs and the land purchase up to coincidence, noting the land deal had been in the works for about a year.
Mr. Goins said in the report that the existing site is inefficient and antiquated in its design, and the new site will serve as a modern clinic with a focus on primary care and enhanced services such as ophthalmology and other specialties. He also noted that D-H is renting buildings near the existing clinic, and that a new clinic with more space will allow a consolidation of all of those services.
D-H projects that it will be about a year at least before any construction activity progresses on the property.