Tag Archives: University of Vermont Health Network

News You Should View: A Commons Trifecta

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I think this is a first in the brief history of NYSV: Three separate entries from a single outlet. That would be The Commons in Brattleboro. The honor does come with a pair of asterisks, because only one of the three is actually a piece of journalism. But all three are worthy of note.

The local impact of the Big Brutalist Bill. The Commons did something that every other outlet in Vermont would be wise to do: Evaluate the local consequences of Trump’s mega-bill. In the Brattleboro area, three separate medical centers are at risk of closure due to Medicaid cuts in the bill. Reporter Joyce Martel quotes Brattleboro Memorial Hospital CEO Christopher J. Doughtery as calling the BBB “vicious” and saying it would “disproportionately affect rural community hospitals.” Given the fact that Vermont’s community hospitals were already in severe straits, there are plenty of stories just waiting to be told in every corner of our B.L.S.

The Commons expands. Vermont Independent Media, the nonprofit that operates The Commons, has acquired The Deerfield Valley News, a weekly that serves a bunch of small towns in south central Vermont. The combined entity hopes to achieve some economies of scale without visible changes in either publication. Here’s hoping it leads to better financial sustainability for both.

Poking Pieciak. The Commons’ opinion pages were graced by a letter from Nick Biddle, a retired professor and Brattleboro resident, urging Treasurer Mike Pieciak to run for governor — or else get out of the way. Biddle observes that Pieciak has clearly been planning a run for governor someday, and is “in the leading financial position to run.” Biddle urges Pieciak to “Run, Mike, run – and announce it loudly… Or step aside now, so that another strong candidate can ready a powerful campaign” to challenge Phil Scott, assuming he seeks a sixth term. Amen, brother.

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Are We Sure the Green Mountain Care Board Knows What the Hell It’s Doing?

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Shots fired!

In response to revenue cuts ordered by the Green Mountain Care Board, the University of Vermont Health Network is slashing services at multiple locations. Most egregious, to me, is the closure of Central Vermont Medical Center’s inpatient psychiatric unit.

Reminder that we’ve had a chronic shortage of inpatient psychiatric space more or less continuously since 2011, when Tropical Storm Irene put the final nail in the old Waterbury state hospital’s coffin. And now we’re cutting eight beds?

A cynical observer might infer that UVMHN disagrees with the Board’s mandate, and is forcing the issue with unpopular and/or unworkable reductions. Seven Days’ Derek Brouwer wrote that the Network’s announcement “ratchets up a long-simmering tension” between the Health Network and the Board.

The Board was in a ratcheting mood itself. It issued a huffy statement Thursday afternoon expressing deep concern with the cuts and asserting that it “was not consulted on, and did not approve, these reductions.”

Well, boo frickin’ hoo.

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GMCB Adds a Dab of Lipstick, Hopes You Won’t Notice It’s Still a Pig

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Well, that didn’t take long. In fact, it couldn’t have happened any faster.

Two weeks after public comment forced the Green Mountain Care Board to defer cancellation of a plan that might have led to a badly-needed increase in inpatient mental health beds, the Board came right back and went ahead with the deal today with minimal amendment. It stands essentially as it did before: it lets the University of Vermont Health Network off the hook for designing a new inpatient facility, thus closing the door on the best opportunity to resolve our 12-years-old-and-counting* crisis on inpatient mental health care.

*That’s the generous count, starting the clock with Tropical Storm Irene. If you want to include the dilapidated, outdated old state hospital, well, the crisis goes back a lot further.

The revised plan requires UVMHN to invest $18 million in boosting “capacity of mental health services in the state.” Not “inpatient,” mind you, but “mental health services” of any sort. The Board then punted review of UVMHN’s plan to the Department of Mental Health because, as Board member Jessica Holmes put it, “we’re not the experts” and DMH is.

It also allows the GMCB to wash its hands of the whole mess, but that’s just a bonus.

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Green Mountain Care Board Prepares to Punt Away an Investment in Inpatient Mental Health Care

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Our health care guardians at the Green Mountain Care Board are trying to sneak through a bit of business that combines bad policy with questionable procedure.

Well, I guess that explains the “sneak through” part. They can’t be proud of this.

Six years ago, the GMCB ordered the University of Vermont Medical Center to take $21 million in surplus revenue and spend it on developing a plan to boost inpatient mental health care, which has been abysmally lacking since Tropical Storm Irene wiped out the old state hospital in 2011. We’re now in our twelfth year of inadequate inpatient care that has left severely mentally ill patients languishing in emergency rooms and frontline providers dealing with the consequences.

The failure to address this situation ought to be a source of embarrassment if not shame to Our Political Leaders.

Anyway, it seemed like a decent idea: Let UVMMC use the surplus to tackle a challenge that nobody else would.

Well, now the GMCB is about to let UVMMC off the hook, further delaying any meaningful response to the shortage of inpatient care. And the Board trying to rush it through with the least possible fanfare.

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Dear Workforce Member: The Definition of “Acceptable Damage” Has Been Escalated

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The news that the University of Vermont Health Network will force workers to use up their vacation and sick days if they get Covid is bad enough. What’s worse is the implicit message about the future of the disease.

“While the UVM Health Network understands that this is a change, as we enter the third year of the pandemic with a realization that COVID-19 will become endemic, UVMHN needed a policy that could be sustainable and offered for the long term,” UVM Health Network spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote in an email.

Worth noting that “this is a change” is a totally vanilla way of saying “we’re sticking it to all of you.” Beyond that, the message is that after pandemic transitions to endemic, the ravages of Covid-19 will be impactful enough to warrant a permanent change in workplace policy. Even when “pandemic” is nothing but a memory, a lot of workers will still get sick enough to use up their paid time off.

For those who believed that we were going to come out of this unscathed — that “endemic” meant our lives could return to normal — this is a chilling concept. Kinda provides a bit of unpleasant context for Gov. Phil Scott’s sweet-talk about the endemic phase. We might be wearing N95s and thinking twice about entering public spaces for a long, long time. Like, indefinitely.

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