Council approves contract keeping The Doorway open for local recovery access
The Doorway stayed open in the Upper Valley and Sullivan County after council scrutiny cut overhead from 35% to 15%. The contract now runs through Sept. 29, 2027.
Sullivan County residents who rely on The Doorway for substance-use screening, naloxone, treatment referrals and recovery support avoided a break in service after the Executive Council approved a renegotiated contract with Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Lebanon. The revised agreement keeps one of New Hampshire’s nine Doorway sites operating for the Upper Valley and Sullivan County through Sept. 29, 2027.
The Doorway is a single point of entry for substance-use services and supports, including screening, evaluation, treatment access, medication-assisted treatment, naloxone and recovery support. The Doorway website directs people to call 211 or use the locator map to reach a Doorway site: “Help is less than an hour away.”
The Department of Health and Human Services had sought a sole-source amendment to the existing contract with Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital through its Division for Behavioral Health, increasing the total price limitation from $7,659,742 to $14,769,657, an increase of $7,109,915. The amendment also raised the individual price limitation from $2,396,742 to $5,067,673 and the shared price limitation from $5,263,000 to $9,701,984 for unmet and flexible needs funding across all nine Doorway contractors.
That review centered in part on administrative overhead. Executive Councilor John Stephen, R-Manchester, pushed DHHS to renegotiate after saying the original 35 percent indirect cost was too high. The final agreement lowered that rate to 15 percent. Stephen said he supported the Doorway concept, while Executive Councilor Joe Kenney, R-Wakefield, said the council should not act as a rubber stamp. Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, D-Lebanon, said there were no alternatives if the amendment failed, underscoring how directly the decision affected people seeking help.
The contract is largely federally financed, with 92.26 percent coming from federal funds and the rest from the state general fund. The Doorway system was set up through a 2025 request for applications that ran from July 1, 2025, to Sept. 29, 2026, and anticipated about $5.475 million over the contract term. A performance audit found the program had not collected enough data to determine effectiveness.
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