Vermonters are suffering right now. They need help.

If you read no other piece today, please scroll down just below this short note and read the powerful and beautifully articulated words of several of our state’s emergency department clinical leaders. Our health care system needs strengthening in all areas. We can and must make progress to strengthen the ENTIRE health care ecosystem by working together. These leaders and their teams need relief, and our family, friends and neighbors deserve to get the care they need when they need it – in and out of the hospital.

On behalf of Vermont’s hospitals, I thank them for their courage and leadership.

Thanks for reading and have a great week,

Ben Smith, Julie Vieth, Matthew Siket, Ryan Sexton: A crisis in our emergency departments

VTDigger

Right now, all across Vermont, too many patients requiring hospitalization are languishing in emergency departments (EDs), sometimes for days at a time. This is a phenomenon known as boarding, which is an unplanned delay in moving to the appropriate care setting because there is no available bed. For years, it has been a well-documented human rights catastrophe for mental health patients, and it has now grown to include those with medical illness, including the critically ill.

Boarding in an ED is data-proven to worsen outcomes. Every single person currently working in the ED has witnessed unacceptable, preventable outcomes caused by lack of hospital capacity. Vermonters are being hurt right now, and it should be considered a crisis. The American College of Emergency Physicians, in an open letter to President Biden, referred to boarding as a public health emergency. We agree. When patients do not move effectively out of the ED, our staff cannot provide the care our communities expect and deserve.

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Legislative Update

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As ER overcrowding worsens, a program helping to ease the crisis may lose funding