Grace Cottage Hospital pushes back on restructuring report

Vermont Public

About 100 people showed up to a community meeting in Townshend on Thursday to show support for Grace Cottage Hospital, the smallest hospital in the state.

Grace Cottage was one of the four hospitals specifically cited in a recent statewide report that calls for a major restructuring of Vermont’s hospital system.

The report says Grace Cottage should consider shifting all of its inpatient beds to mental health, geriatric psychiatry or memory care, and close down its emergency department, utilizing the beds at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, which is about 20 miles away.

But at the meeting Thursday, Grace Cottage CEO Olivia Sweetnam said the hospital was not interested in voluntarily accepting the report’s suggestions.

“These are recommendations, not mandates,” Sweetnam said. “Green Mountain Care Board, [Agency of Human Services], does not have the ability to say, ‘You are now a psychiatric facility.’”

The report was commissioned by the Legislature to address years of financial losses among the state’s hospitals, and to “reduce inefficiencies, lower costs, improve population health outcomes, reduce health inequities and increase access to essential services.”

Grace Cottage Hospital was one of four hospitals — along with Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, North Country Hospital in Newport and Springfield Hospital — the reportnamed as being at risk due to their minimal growth potential and poor financial position.



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