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New Hampshire
Concord Hospital To Perform ‘Armed Intruder’ Drill Wednesday
CONCORD, NH — If you hear strange sounds or see unusual activity at the Concord Hospital campus on Wednesday, everything is OK … it is only a drill.
Concord Hospital Health System and the New Hampshire Department of Homeland Security will conduct an “armed intruder” drill at the hospital. This is the third such drill happening with the hospital’s affiliates. Drills were also held in Franklin and Laconia earlier this year.
John Duval, the hospital’s director of security, said safety and training have been consistent priorities for security staff. However, security staffers, who also worked with hospital staff to ensure they were prepared, had not done extensive training since the end of the pandemic. Duval has also been named to a new state commission focused on hospital safety.
A few events nationally led the team to “revisit our policy” and shift the focus from active shooter to armed intruder.
“There have been situations, not only in the United States but across the world, where the killing of people in one incident happens in other ways other than firearms,” he said.
Duval said security and medical staff needed to be focused on the person and the weapon, not just a gun. The security staff then rewrote many of the protocols over the course of about two years. During all of last year, employees at all three hospitals were trained with the new policies.
Eric Crane, a security program manager at the hospital, said employees worked on functional exercises, testing their eternal response to an event. Every department and employee was involved in hundreds of activities. The events and exercises were “short in duration” but meant to get employees to focus on what was happening at the hospital before outside personnel arrived to assist.
“Our policy speaks to avoid, hide, and fight,” he said.
Previously, the policy was run, hide, and fight, but that often led to hundreds of employees all converging on exits, causing clusters of activity and chaos. By avoiding, employees create distance, and in many ways, Duval said, they are safer, too.
Crane said he would act as an armed intruder and then instruct the staff to react to the scenario chosen for the training so the drill would be as realistic as possible. Hospital staff, he said, performed the tasks before work, during breaks and lunch hours, and after regular work hours, so their day-to-day activities focused on patient care were not affected by the training.
Security officials conducted debriefings after the training to analyze each department’s successes. Crane said each employee reacted differently to each scenario; some found their heart rates rising, while others had to address the emotionality of the training.
“The reactions have been quite positive,” Crane said.
Duval said each department now had safety and escape plans based on the training. And every employee, too, has their plans, he said.
“We want them to keep this, not on the front burner,” he said. “Awareness. Don’t come to work afraid; come to work aware. And when you do that, you can do your job, reasonably safe, and the employee will be successful when they are mindful of their options.”
After all the training, Duval and Crane raised the level beyond the hospitals to include outside law enforcement, fire and rescue teams, and other entities involved with emergency rooms. When there is conflict in a hospital, Duval said, it was often in an emergency department, even though it could happen anywhere in the building. But it was usually focused on a specific crisis incident.
While law enforcement and firefighters will be involved, the focus will not be on their activities and reactions as much as on the reactions of the hospital staff and security.
Franklin was held in May, and Laconia in August. After Wednesday’s work, the security officials will assess how everything went and then proceed.
Duval and Crane said the hospitals had excellent working relationships with law enforcement partners around the county and were fortunate to have built rapport with the departments.
The drill will start at Concord Hospital around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 25.
What employers are getting wrong, and how to fix it before it becomes a claim
New Hampshire’s employment law landscape heading into 2026 may not be dramatically different from last year, but the real risks lie in implementation missteps. From the initial setting of wages, to calculating and distributing wages, employers will likely find a specific statute and/or labor regulation governing the transaction. Failure to follow these detailed wage and hour laws can result in significant back wages and other penalties being imposed by the state or federal Department of Labor following an audit. Fortunately, however, this area of employment law is relatively easy to master, once you are familiar with the basics.
Notice compliance
One of the most common pitfalls for employers in New Hampshire is misunderstanding the wage and hour notice requirements under RSA 275 and the related New Hampshire Department of Labor Administrative Rules.
At the time of hire, employers must notify employees in writing of their rate of pay and the day and place of payment. This notice is traditionally delivered to employees by way of an offer letter or some sort of “New Hire Rate of Pay” form. (A sample form is available from the New Hampshire Department of Labor website.) What surprises most employers, however, is that Lab. 803.03(f)(6) also requires employers to request and obtain their employees’ signatures on this written notification of wages, and employers must keep a copy of the signed written notification of wages on file. Further, employers must notify employees in writing during the course of employment of any changes to wages or day of pay prior to such changes taking effect, and the employer must obtain the employee’s signature on this subsequent notification as well. (See RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)
Employers are further required to notify employees in writing, or through a posted notice maintained in a place accessible to employees, of:
• employment practices and policies with regard to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits.
• deductions made from the employee’s payroll check, for each period such deductions are made.
• information regarding the deductions allowed from wage payments under state law. (RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)
Policies regarding vacation and sick leave should inform employees whether or not the employer will “cash out” unused time at year end or at the end of employment, and if so, under what terms. Again, if any changes are made to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits during the course of employment (all of which are considered “wages” under New Hampshire law), employers must request and obtain their employees’ signatures on the written notification of the change, and must keep a copy of the signed form on file. (Lab. 803.03.) Importantly, notification by way of pay stub alone is not sufficient, and, these requirements apply to both increases and decreases in pay.
Two-hour minimum (reporting pay)
Another frequently overlooked obligation is New Hampshire’s two-hour minimum reporting pay requirement. Under RSA 275:43-a, non-exempt employees who report to work but are sent home early must generally be paid for at least two hours. Weather-related closures, client cancellations or operational slowdown days can trigger this rule. Employers should also note that the New Hampshire Department of Labor currently applies this law to remote-based employees. Consequently, employees who “report to work” at an employer’s request from a home office may likewise have a right to two hours of pay, depending on the circumstances.
Salaried vs. hourly employees
Misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime remains a significant source of compliance exposure. The position’s job duties — not the titles or label such as “salaried” — determine whether an employee qualifies for an overtime exemption.
Employers, particularly in nonprofits, health care and small businesses, unintentionally misapply exempt classifications to roles such as administrative staff, office managers, executive assistants, program coordinators or hybrid jobs that involve significant non-exempt tasks. Over time, as organizational needs evolve and employees take on broader responsibilities, job duties can drift outside of an exemption’s scope.
Best practice is to periodically review job descriptions and actual job duties to ensure continued compliance with exemption criteria, particularly following any significant restructuring or job redesigns.
Peg O’Brien is chair of McLane Middleton’s Employment Law Practice Group. She can be reached at margaret.o’brien@mclane.com.
Local News
“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” said the family of the victim.
A new photo has been released of the victim in a nearly 30-year-long unsolved murder case, in the hope of finding any new potential witnesses in the cold case, New Hampshire officials said.
“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” the family of Rosalie Miller said in a press release. “We miss her and want to give her peace.”
Miller was last seen on December 8, 1996 at her apartment in Manchester. At the time of her disappearance, Miller had plans on meeting friends in the Auburn, New Hampshire area, officials said.
Her body was found on January 20, 1997 in a partially wooded spot on a residential lot along the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn, officials said in the release.
The autopsy report declared Miller’s death a homicide by asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation, N.H. officials wrote.
As part of a new effort to garner public help with the case, an “uncirculated” photo of Miller, 36, is being distributed “in hopes it may jog the memory of someone who saw or spoke with her in the winter of 1996,” Attorney General John M. Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall announced on behalf of the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit in a joint press release.
Investigators are especially hoping to talk to anyone who was in contact with Miller in December of 1996 or anyone “who may have seen her in the vicinity of the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn during that time,” officials said in the release.
“We are releasing this new photograph today because we believe someone out there has information, perhaps a detail they thought was insignificant at the time, that could be the key to solving this case and bringing justice for Rosalie and those who loved her,” Senior Assistant Attorney General R. Christopher Knowles, New Hampshire Cold Case Unit Chief said in the release.
The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit encourages anyone with any amount of information to contact the group at [email protected] or (603) 271-2663.
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