The Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center is telling its employees living in domestic partnerships that they will need to get married or obtain a civil union or lose their benefits.
The Valley News of Lebanon is reporting that the hospital will no longer extend benefits to employees in domestic partnerships after January 2011.
Dartmouth Hitchcock spokesman Jason Aldous says 236 employees, about 3 percent of the eligible staff, receive domestic-partner benefits.
He says now that Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont have either same sex marriage or civil unions, Dartmouth Hitchcock is doing away with the domestic partner designation. Opposite-sex domestic partners and their dependents also will be ineligible for coverage beginning in 2011.