Higher costs led to big hospital system losses in Vermont in 2022
VTDigger
As predicted, 2022 was a challenging fiscal year for Vermont’s 14 community hospitals, which as a group registered almost $62 million operating loss. Hospitals have said that those losses, already creating instability, will only deepen unless regulators change their oversight methods.
That didn’t happen Wednesday as Green Mountain Care Board members voted to set their overall revenue growth target for fiscal year 2024 at 8.6% over the patient revenue recorded in 2022, or 4.3% per year.
For half of the state’s hospitals, that growth target equals less revenue than the board approved last year for their 2023 budgets. That is in part by design since the board voted last year to allow up to an 8.6% increase in the last budget cycle intended to cover the combined upcoming two years.