Vermont hospitals implement new rules for accessing free medical care
VTDigger
More Vermonters should have access to free or discounted health care at hospitals and other large health care facilities under a law that went into effect Monday.
Because they are nonprofit entities, Vermont’s hospitals have long been required by federal regulations to provide some level of free or discounted health care, also known as charity care, to patients.
But in the past, different Vermont hospitals have used different criteria — such as employing different income thresholds and different residency requirements — to determine who is eligible for free or discounted medical care.
In 2022, lawmakers passed Act 119, which sets out minimum requirements for hospitals offering charity care. The ultimate goal is to help more Vermonters access free medical care, Mike Fisher, Vermont’s chief health care advocate, said in an interview.
“It creates a statewide minimum standard,” Fisher, who worked with Vermont hospitals to draft the bill, said in an interview. “Before this, we saw hospitals doing all kinds of things that didn’t make sense about how they were determining eligibility. But hospitals can be more generous than the law calls for.”