It’s Town Meeting Week, when the legislators are released from the State House and allowed back in the wild to take a breather and catch up with their constituents.

Vermont lawmakers are making their final decisions on what bills they want to pursue as they get closer to the halfway point of the legislative session, with the crossover deadline coming up on March 15.

A cyberattack is affecting the ability of hundreds of thousands of Vermonters to get medication. Around 200,000 Vermont Medicaid patients are running into issues getting their medications from pharmacies, and state leaders are working to try to remedy the situation.

In the midst of a nationwide healthcare worker shortage, a seasonal surge in respiratory viruses, and reduced options for Vermonters who need long-term or skilled nursing care, hospitals across the region are at or nearing capacity.

First responders show up at fatal car crashes, house fires and overdoses in Vermont's largest cities and its smallest towns.

A huge thank you to the House Health Care and House Human Services Committees and their chairs, Rep. Lori Houghton and Rep. Theresa Wood, for holding a joint hearing last week on the systemwide impact of patients who cannot get to the appropriate level of care due to a fragile post-acute and long term care system.

Health care officials told lawmakers Wednesday that a shortage of nursing home beds has forced hospitals to become residential care providers for patients who have nowhere else to go.

The Vermont House on Thursday gave its strong approval to legislation intended to make telemedicine more accessible.

Pharmacies warned of long waits for customers and U.S. military clinics worldwide have been affected after a cyberattack against one of the country’s largest prescription processors rolled into a third day of downtime.

Once again, I am interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to write a love letter to Montpelier. Last week, the Valentine’s Day Phantom plastered the town with hearts. Just like the first snow of the year, it never loses its magic. Montpelier is everything from children getting a five-cent roll after school at Manghis Bread to running into a legislator while grabbing pizza, and I am so thankful to live and work here.

America's rural health safety net is feeling pressured, with half of all rural hospitals in the U.S. now in the red. And according to new research from Chartis, high enrollment of rural residents in Medicare Advantage plans could make the situation worse.

At the North Coun­try Hos­pi­tal an­nual meet­ing held last month Dr. Greg Walker, head of the med­ical staff, de­clared “At North Coun­try we take care of our own.”

When Dr. Trey Dobson started practicing emergency medicine in Vermont 20 years ago, he might arrive in the morning to see one patient who came in overnight still waiting to be discharged to a skilled nursing facility or rehab center.

For years, Vermont lawmakers have aimed a barrage of legislation at a seemingly intractable and impossibly complex problem: health care costs are increasingly unaffordable for residents.

A Ukrainian man pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday to his leadership role in two cyberattack schemes that caused tens of millions of dollars in losses and temporarily crippled a Vermont hospital in 2020, according to the Justice Department.

Nestled between New Hampshire and upstate New York, Vermont is a quiet, mostly rural state.

For those that skim, I’m keeping the intro brief in the hope that you dedicate more brain space to the budget piece, below:

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.

As emergency room doctors nationwide plead for help to ease patient overcrowding, the one federal program that could fix the crisis is poised to lose funding.

Depending on your insurance provider and hospital, the cost of medical procedures can vary immensely. Hospital pricing transparency laws have attempted to lower costs by creating competition.