Several hundred people protested proposed CVMC cuts to local and regional health care last Thursday, November 21, and as The Valley Reporter goes to press on November 26, Vermont legislative leaders and other state officials, including Lt. governor-elect John Rodgers are voicing objections to the proposed cuts.
At a November 26 press conference, legislators presented their concerns via a letter to Dr. Sunil Eappen, president and CEO of CVMS’s parent organization, the University of Vermont Health Network.
The letter makes clear the signatories concerns about the proposed cuts which were announced on November 14 and would close Mad River Valley Practice, the CVMC Rehab practice in Waitsfield and many other essential patient care services. CVMC currently rents about 3,300 square feet of the building and has been a tenant since 2016, with the current two-year lease auto-renewed on October 1, 2024.
FINANCIAL DETAILS
Additionally, the health network’s plan would close Central Vermont Medical Center’s Inpatient Psychiatry unit, two primary care clinics and multiple rehab therapy clinics in Central Vermont, dialysis centers in Newport, Rutland and St. Albans, the kidney transplant program at University of Vermont Medical Center, as well as limiting emergency, after-hours surgeries at CVMC, and decreasing UVMMC’s overnight capacity by 50 beds, among other cuts.
These cuts and closures have been labeled cost savings measures, designed to help fill a $16.2 million deficit although CVMC media spokesperson Jay Ericsen did not provide any financial specifics about either the costs of running the local clinics or the patient losses he said the network was experiencing on a patient visit basis. Several calls to the UVMC media department were not returned this week.
“As public officials elected to represent our constituents, we believe our health care system should be designed to keep us healthy and provide care when we need it. Clearly, we have a broken system when the largest hospital network in the state is proposing to cut programs that our communities rely on, strictly for budgetary reasons. As legislators we are deeply concerned about closing primary care clinics in our rural communities that already have 600-person waitlists,” the letter to Eappen reads.
LITTLE VISION
“These decisions are being presented with little vision for what will happen to the current and future patients who rely on the services proposed to be cut. There has been a lot of pointing fingers over the last week about who is to blame and why this is happening, but at the end of the day, if we allow these cuts, our communities will suffer,” the legislators and state officials wrote.
This week’s protests over the proposed cuts follows two “honk and wave” events held in Waitsfield and at Central Vermont Medical Center on November 21. Both events saw enthusiastic turnout and vocal support (as well as horns honking) for protecting local health care resources.
Barry Bolio, Mad River Family Practice, operations specialist, and support specialist spoke to local and statewide media at the November 21 event.
NOT VIABLE
“We have over 600 people on a waitlist to get primary care at our clinic. These are people coming from Burlington, and other far away areas, to try to get care because they can’t get it elsewhere. The administration is proposing we move all our patients and staff to other Family Medicine Practices, one of them being the Waterbury Family Medicine Clinic, where there’s already a 550-person waitlist and existing patients can’t get an appointment for months. How is this going to work? It’s not a viable plan,” Bolio said.
Ryan Gauvin, clinical nurse lead for Mad River Family Practice said he and his co-workers would like to understand the financial reasoning of CVMC and UVMHN.
“We’re just trying to understand the logic of how moving the same number of patients from this clinic to other clinics throughout the network is going to achieve the requisite revenue cutting,” Gauvin said last week.
RECONSIDER CUTS
Ultimately, the legislators urged the state’s largest health care network to sit down at the table with the Green Mountain Care Board, which ordered it to reduce its commercial rates.
“We are calling on you to reconsider these cuts and commit to working with the Green Mountain Card Board, Agency of Human Services, and the Vermont Legislature to find a path forward that keeps necessary services open and available to those of us who need them,” the legislators and state officials wrote to Eappen.
“When making hard decisions about cutting programs, we must consider the costs that may not make their way on to the balance sheet. In this case, the costs to our community health of these proposed layoffs and cuts is far too great,” they added.
AFT Vermont represents over 10,000 health care and higher education workers in Vermont. Union organizers are also seeking financial details about the proposed closures and will continue to hold events and rallies including one December 5 at noon at UVMHN.
