The Doorway at Cheshire Medical Center Leads to Healing

New Hampshire posted the third-highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in the nation in 2018. The drug death rate in Cheshire County ranked second among the state’s 10 counties, according to the New Hampshire Drug Monitoring Initiative. It was a crisis for families in many rural towns in the area and very difficult to find access to treatment even when a person was motivated to seek help.

Cheshire Medical Center, Keene, NH is a 94-bed rural hospital and a member of the Dartmouth Health System. As the county’s only hospital, Cheshire Medical Center saw 214 patients in its emergency department (ED) with a primary diagnosis of substance-use disorder (SUD) that year. To improve those numbers and save lives, the hospital started The Doorway at Cheshire Medical Center in 2019.

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