New Hampshire, hospitals resolve lawsuit on holding psychiatric patients in emergency rooms

CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire hospitals and state health officials said Wednesday they will work together to solve the state’s long-standing problem of holding psychiatric patients in hospital emergency rooms, a move that ends years of litigation.

A federal judge who had declared the practice unconstitutional in February followed up in May with an order giving the state one year to develop a system under which people would be held for no…