Office of Health Strategy dissolved after seven years and little effect on costs

Connecticut Inside Investigator – Thursday, May 7, 2026
By Marc E. Fitch

The Connecticut Office of Health Strategy (OHS), an agency with the dedicated mission to control and lower health care costs in Connecticut, was dissolved by Gov. Ned Lamont and the General Assembly as part of the 2026 budget package after a seven-year run that saw the office grow in size and cost, but with little change to Connecticut’s escalating health care prices.

Gov. Lamont proposed dissolving the OHS in his budget after former OHS Commissioner Dierdre Gifford stepped down in May 2025 over her involvement with a federal corruption scandal during her tenure at the Department of Social Services, and lawmakers followed suit, agreeing to end the agency and disperse its employees and responsibilities to other departments.

Although its stated mission was to keep health care costs down in Connecticut, OHS, by its own reports, had little effect, and may have just added to those costs overall. The agency’s budget grew from roughly $3 million in 2019 to more than $18 million last year, with 84 percent of that budget going to outside contractors to manage massive databases of health care information and compile reports regarding Connecticut’s health care cost benchmarking initiative.

The agency was also placed in charge of Connecticut’s Certificate of Need process, which determines whether hospitals or medical practices can expand or reduce services in an area. In concept, the agency was intended to unify multiple healthcare monitoring functions from across various state departments, better enabling the state to gather data, monitor and control costs.

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