UVM Health Network announces widespread service cuts
The University of Vermont Health Network announced plans Thursday for a sprawling series of health service cuts at its facilities, reductions that could impact how and where patients across Vermont could receive medical care.
The network plans to eliminate the transplant department at UVM Medical Center, shutter the inpatient psychiatric unit at Central Vermont Medical Center, offload dialysis programs in Newport, Rutland and St. Albans, and close two clinics in the Mad River Valley.
UVM Medical Center, in Burlington, is also slated to reduce its census of inpatients — currently about 450 — by about 50 in the coming months.
Health network leaders blamed the reductions on recent orders from the Green Mountain Care Board, a key state health care regulator. Those orders limit how much revenue the network’s hospitals can raise from medical services, and how much it can charge commercial insurance for those services.
“Today’s a hard day for our organization and for our leaders,” Sunny Eappen, the CEO of the UVM Health Network, said at a press briefing Thursday morning. “We’re having to take action on a number of measures that we don’t want to be doing. But as a result of the decisions by the Green Mountain Care Board, we’re being forced to do that.”