Acting in the truest sense of a “community hospital,” Lawrence + Memorial Hospital has set aside concerns about the bottom line to respond to a health crisis, in the process giving emergency responders the ability to save lives.

The health crisis is the shocking number of heroin overdoses the region is experiencing. To confront it, L+M has agreed to provide a year’s supply of the opioid antidote drug Narcan to at least six police departments in the region, and will entertain requests from others. If applied in time, Narcan can revive an overdose drug user who is at the point of death.

Since police officers are often the first to respond to a report of a possible overdose, their ability to immediately dispense Narcan can mean the difference between survival and death. Waiting for an ambulance crew to arrive and dispense the drug can mean waiting until it’s too late.

Not all departments had sufficient access to Narcan to supply responding officers. L+M officials could have taken the position that providing the life-saving drug is a municipal expense or that the state government needed to step up. Instead, demonstrating its sense of place in the community as the institution most associated with protecting its collective health, hospital officials agreed to provide a year’s supply to six local police departments, so far.

L+M will supply the Waterford, Stonington, East Lyme, City of Groton, Town of Groton and Ledyard departments. It could receive more requests. Ron Kersey, emergency medical services coordinator for L+M, announced the program at a Monday news conference. The hospital is not speculating on costs because it does not know how many doses participating departments will need. At $40 each, the investment will be significant.

It has been a tough stretch fiscally for L+M and many of the state’s nonprofit community hospitals, with the federal government tightening Medicare and Medicaid payments and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy trimming state funding.

Meanwhile, L+M’s plan to form an affiliation with the Yale-New Haven Health System network, seen as necessary to providing financial stability, has been held up by a Malloy executive order. Before any new affiliations proceed, the governor is asking a study committee to evaluate the state process of evaluating and approving them. On Monday the committee held just its second meeting since Malloy issued his executive order in February.

L+M had a ready excuse for inaction; instead it did the right thing and stepped forward.