A Grafton Superior Court judge has denied Littleton Regional Healthcare's request for an injunction related to the opening of a private urgent care facility in town.
Littleton filed the injunction in October against the Department of Health and Human Services, after its commissioner ruled there wouldn't be an adverse effect on essential health services to the Critical Access Hospital if a ConvenientMD Urgent Care clinic opened less than three miles away.
Judge Lawrence MacLeod, Jr., said he did not have jurisdiction over the case.
He cited RSA 151:4, which governs these types of applications and outlines that, if a party objects to the Commissioner's ruling, it needs to request a hearing, and then appeal to the state's Supreme Court.
Littleton argued in court last week that it would lose about $3 million a year if ConvenientMD opened.
But Judge MacLeod wrote that Littleton didn't demonstrate a likelihood there would be serious and immediate harm if the court didn't grant the injunction.
In a statement Thursday afternoon, Littleton’s CEO Bob Nutter said, “We strongly believe the Department misinterpreted and misapplied an important state law designed to protect Critical Access Hospitals like Littleton Regional Healthcare from harmful competition within a 15-mile radius.”
ConvenientMD received its license from DHHS last Wednesday and has started seeing patients.
Read the judge's ruling below.
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