Around 200 people packed into Newport’s Gateway Center Thursday night to talk about the future of their local hospital.
The event, held by North Country Hospital, was in response to a state-commissioned report that recommended radical transformation of Vermont’s health care system.
Among those recommendations are to reconfigure all of North Country Hospital's inpatient beds, convert the emergency department to urgent care and shift birthing to other places except in emergencies.
But the vast majority of local residents and physicians voiced their disagreement with these recommendations — like Greg Walker, who's the president of the medical staff at North Country Hospital.
"You ought to put a simple litmus test out, if you're going to talk about health care — you should ask yourself, is this recommendation going to kill people?" Walker said. "And if it is, well, you know what? That's a bad recommendation, and they should go away."
Several attendees brought up their concerns about the loss of robust obstetrics at the facility, including Derby dairy farmer Richard Nelson, who is also running unopposed for a seat in the Vermont House.
"I stopped farming to be here, OK, it's how important it is to me," Nelson quipped. He went on to say his daughter was delivered at North Country Hospital in 1998. "And if that hospital hadn't been there — my wife wasn't in there 30 minutes, and she was born."
Obstetrician Peter Stuart questioned the data that the report, by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
"[They] used a report that was written by a woman who's a professor at the University of Minnesota," Stuart said. "If [they] had actually spent even five minutes to email this person, which I did, by the way... [they] would have gotten the same response that I got — to use her report and use her data as a reason to close OB units in rural communities is incorrect and and incomplete. Those are her words."
North Country Hospital President and CEO Tom Frank opened Thursday's meeting also by citing inaccurate data in the report, saying there was a discrepancy between the drafted and final versions.
"One example is, the report we received in July said 200 births per year, which is accurate," he said. "What the final report said was 200 births in two years, taking the worst year we had, financially extrapolating out to make it look like it would require the state of Vermont to support us to the tune of $69 million — it's completely inaccurate."
Frank added that the hospital is financially stable enough to have 221 days of cash on hand — but that the Oliver Wyman report's characterization of the hospital has already made it harder to hire new employees.
Laurie Grimm, a Newport resident, told the crowd that there are local people already under the false impression that the hospital is closing.
"On Facebook, which I realize is a social media, there are people who are scared, and they are commenting that they are scared, and they think this is something that's going to happen right now," Grimm said. "You're going to need to get out front of this like, today, and let the community know."
North Country Hospital is encouraging residents to write to state officials, and has posted a list of contacts on its website.
On hand to hear all this upset were a couple members of the Green Mountain Care Board, which commissioned the Oliver Wyman report. They included Dave Murman, who is also an emergency medical clinician at Central Vermont Medical Center.
He assured the room that the report's recommendations are that — only recommendations.
"The [Green Mountain Care] board does not have any control of what service a hospital has," Murman said. "We have no control of what care you provide."
He added: "And I think, and I have a lot of similar thoughts about rural surgeries, rural OB care."
Attendees at the forum asked Murman that the Green Mountain Care Board amend or toss out all together the Oliver Wyman report over concerns about accuracy.
"So it's not my report to amend," Murman said. "And what I would like to do is have more discussion about it."
The Green Mountain Care Board shared with Vermont Public a response to the meeting Thursday night. It reads in full:
“We greatly appreciate the Newport community and hospital’s participation in ensuring sustainability of the health system. We recognize that the demographic realities in many of our communities are placing immense strain on rural healthcare. At the request of the legislature, the Green Mountain Care Board, working with the Agency of Human Services, commissioned Oliver Wyman to develop a data-driven and community-engaged report outlining strategies to ensure access to essential services and prevent the sudden and disruptive closure of rural hospitals.
“It’s important that communities understand what the Oliver Wyman report is, what it is not, and what the next steps are. The Oliver Wyman report provides financial projections for local hospitals and offers a menu of options to preserve or enhance access, reduce cost, and improve quality of care for Vermonters. The Oliver Wyman report does not require specific State actions be taken nor does it direct the Green Mountain Care Board or any State entity to close hospitals or eliminate service lines. The Agency of Human Services will be leading health system transformation by working with local communities and hospitals to determine what steps, if any, are appropriate. We encourage community members to continue to engage with state and local leaders in planning for the demographic and financial headwinds ahead of us; your participation and valuable insights are critical to shaping the future of health care in our state.”
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