VAHHS Annual Meeting
VAHHS Annual Meeting: September 29 to 30, 2022
In the News
Editorial: Painful cuts
Rutland Herald

UVM Health Network CEO John Brumsted has pushed back on the Green Mountain Care Board, which recently completed its review and approval of the fiscal year 2023 budgets for the state’s 14 community hospitals. We are grateful he is standing up for Vermonters in need of care.

“We are extremely disappointed and concerned that the Green Mountain Care Board has dismissed the severity of the financial situation facing Vermont’s hospitals — and with it, our patients’ ability to access the care they deserve,” Brumsted said. UVM Medical Center is the largest hospital in the state. Its sister hospital — Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin — serves the Barre-Montpelier area of the state.

“These budgets included what was needed to protect critical services while continuing vital work to improve access. After finding reductions, tightening our belts, and significantly dipping into our reserves, these were the most responsible budgets possible given ongoing steep inflation in the cost of providing patient care,” he said in a statement released on Monday.
Regulator cuts hospital insurance rate increases
Addison Independent

The Green Mountain Care Board trimmed commercial insurance rate increases at two University of Vermont Health Network hospitals Monday, drawing a sharp response from the state’s largest hospital operator.

Earlier this summer, the University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN) requested a slate of commercial insurance rate increases — effectively, seeking to charge private insurance companies more for services provided at its Vermont hospitals.

But on Monday, expressing concern about affordability of medical care for Vermonters, the Green Mountain Care Board approved smaller hikes for those hospitals — University of Vermont Medical Center and Berlin’s Central Vermont Medical Center.
Vt. health regulators embrace challenges, opportunities
WCAX

Recent hospital rate hikes are raising renewed concerns about the affordability of health care in the Green Mountain State. It comes as the Green Mountain Care Board, the state entity that regulates spending, is seeing a turnover in its membership.

The University of Vermont Medical Center was granted a 14.7% rate hike this week, driven largely by wages for traveling nurses, inflation, and stress on the state’s elder care and mental health systems.

“The whole set of Vermonters who get their insurance through their employer -- that’s the group that’s particularly hit by this this year,” said Mike Fisher, the state’s health care advocate.
VDH: COVID cases fall no deaths in September
VBM

The Vermont Department of Health reported September 7 that COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations both decreased and are still considered "Low." Total cases for the week decreased by 51 to 494. Hospitalizations fell from 58 to 35 but are still slightly higher than two weeks ago (30). The plurality of cases is of people in their 20s and the highest rate is those 80+. The BA.5 variant has become the predominant variant of COVID-19. 

There were 19 COVID-related fatalities in August and none so far in September, for a pandemic total of 715 (the VDH report could be updated as more data becomes available). Vermont now has the lowest COVID death rate in the nation, at 113 per 100,000 population.
Southern Vermont AHEC looking for more host houses for medical students
NBC 5

With the shortage of health care workers across the country, one Vermont program is trying to highlight the benefits of staying in the state by pairing up medical students in southern Vermont with housing hosts.

But the Southern Vermont Area Health Education Center said they have had fewer housing hosts available since the pandemic.

The "Clinical Rotation Home Stay Housing Program" with the Area Health Education Center, matches medical students from UVM's Larner College of Medicine with host families across the state when they're on their clinical rotations.

The program also shows some of the benefits of practicing medicine in rural communities.
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