From OCHO to law
In 2023, the long time Otero County hospital was quietly being acquired without community input and little awareness. Knowing the impact to reproductive healthcare access and gender affirming fair plus the need for community to have a voice, the New Mexico Dream Team, Bold Futures, and the ACLU of NM moved to center the Otero community. With gatherings that included LGBTQ+ and BIPOC individuals, local providers, community health council members, the Otero County Healthcare Organizing (OCHO) project took root.
OCHO Project conversations focused on understanding how a Catholic healthcare entity, CHRISTUS, interfered with access to certain reproductive and gender affirming health care because CHRISTUS prioritizes religious doctrine through their Ethical and Religious Directives. In addition, conversation included the need for the state to have a bare minimum oversight of large healthcare acquisitions and mergers.
The very next legislative opportunity saw the passage of first oversight legislation that put into law the ability for the state to have oversight of at least hospitals across New Mexico Senate Bill 15. Leaders from the OCHO Project participated in public comment and gave valuable feedback. That law passed in 2024, but was limited to hospitals and also limited in state oversight: it was only set to last one year. That meant working on language and participating in conversations hosted by the state’s Office of the Superintendent of Insurance (OSI) during the interim before the 2025 legislative session. Based on learnings from the OCHO Project conversations, the OSI hosted meetings not just in Albuquerque and Las Cruces and included stops in Gallup, Alamogordo, Taos and Las Vegas.
The new bill included valuable insights from the OCHO Project conversations and because of the OSI listening meetings, the bill also included feedback from providers across the state as well as community members and hospitals. The bill did have some adversity in getting through the process and started off as a senate bill, then in the last several weeks of the 60-day session House Bill 586 had clearer language and a clearer path. HB586 passed and is now New Mexico law with oversight over health care entity mergers and acquisitions.
The law is vital to ensuring there is community involvement and feedback in if and how mergers and acquisitions will impact themselves and their families and will give voice to concerns of religious doctrine standing in the way of quality and culturally competent care.