The lawsuit, which was discreetly filed in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire in early April, is the type of document that is typically overlooked in favor of larger news cycles. However, this one has persisted, being picked up by Lebanon’s local reporters, state radio, and trade press. It’s difficult to read it without sensing that there has been a long-simmering issue at Dartmouth Health.
Up until January 2025, Carol Barsky served as Dartmouth Health’s chief quality and value officer, a position that sounds like courteous corporate language for someone who is expected to pose difficult questions. According to the complaint, she was an emergency physician who was hired in 2021, had a Lebanon address, and had a habit of taking her work seriously. Her attorneys claim that she was fired because of that habit.
According to her filing, the narrative begins with a standard board order. Examine the supply chain. Examine what is being bought, who is selling it, and whether it is secure. Hospitals everywhere had to make do during the pandemic, accepting goods they wouldn’t have touched a year ago and purchasing from unknown vendors. After the shortages subsided, most hospitals tightened. According to Barsky’s complaint, Dartmouth Health failed to do so and kept purchasing from black market vendors long after the crisis had subsided.
One of those terms that sounds technical until you consider its true meaning is “gray market.” somewhere in the middle of legal and illegal. products with an unknown origin. That uncertainty is not abstract when it comes to examination gloves, the type of gloves used for procedures like pelvic exams and blood draws, which Barsky’s complaint describes in clinical, almost reluctant detail. A failed glove may expose a person to hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV. There’s no elegant way to say that.
The part that lingers is what is said to have happened next. The complaint claims that CEO Joanne Conroy firmly objected to Barsky’s presentation of her findings to the board. Her presentations were allegedly altered to minimize the dangers. According to the lawsuit, Conroy “interrupted, contradicted and otherwise censored” her in real time during a board meeting in April 2025. In the summer of 2025, things “continued to deteriorate.” Conroy allegedly called to chastise Barsky and accuse her of insubordination after she suggested replacing a batch of questionable gloves at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
Almost nothing significant has been said by Dartmouth Health. A spokesperson promised a “fair, respectful, and compliant workplace” and declined to comment further, issuing the kind of statement organizations make when their attorneys are present. In late April, the defendants obtained an extension of their response window and added another attorney. They might reframe everything based on their version of events. However, her story is currently the only one available to the public.
Reading the filing gives the impression that this is more about how big hospital systems deal with bad news than it is about a single fired executive. Healthcare whistleblower cases typically follow a familiar pattern: an internal investigation, conflict with management, an abrupt departure, and a lawsuit that speaks loudly about the quiet part. More or less, Dartmouth Health has been here before. The recent $850,000 class-action settlement, the ongoing fertility doctor lawsuit, and the Misty Porter case from earlier in the decade. Depending on how giving you want to be, it could be a pattern or just bad luck.
Barsky’s complaint feels unique because of its specificity. The meetings are named by her. She gives the equipment names. She explains exactly what she believes went wrong and who she believes caused it to go wrong in language that sounds like someone who has spent a career being cautious. It is another matter entirely whether the court concurs.
