State health care regulators have made significant cuts to the University of Vermont Medical Center’s proposed 2026 budget.
The Green Mountain Care Board on Friday slashed the medical center’s proposed commercial insurance revenue by nearly $90 million. The Burlington hospital had proposed cutting those rates by roughly 8%, but the board ordered a 16% reduction.
It also ordered the hospital to reduce its total patient revenue by 0.2%. The hospital had requested a 2.2% increase.
The cut to the hospital’s proposed net patient revenue means it cannot collect any more income than it did this year, a significant action by the board.
Throughout Friday’s meeting, Green Mountain Care Board members tore into the University of Vermont Health Network, which includes two other hospitals in Vermont and three in New York. The board accused the network of wasting money on lobbying and executive pay while allowing health care for Vermont patients to deteriorate.
The board also criticized the health network for sending Vermont health care dollars to its underperforming hospitals in New York, and for raising the pay of executives while costs continued to rise.
“UVMMC is paying tens of millions of dollars of health network expenditures that have not been shown as necessary given our affordability crisis,” said Green Mountain Care Board Chair Owen Foster. “Including an additional and unnecessary layer of corporate bureaucracy, and health network administrators that actually remove critical assets and resources from Vermont.”
The board took $16 million out of the medical center’s proposed budget, which were funds the health network was going to take out of Vermont and send to the New York hospitals.
The board considered putting a requirement into the budget decision to prevent the UVM Health Network from sending any more money to New York next year, but ultimately concluded that would be illegal.
So it instead took the money out of the budget, saying the health network could come back for a midyear adjustment and ask for that money back, as long as it doesn’t use any Vermont money to bail out the New York hospitals.
Previous coverage from Vermont Edition: UVM Health Network CEO Sunny Eappen on hospital spending
UVM Medical Center is by far the largest health care provider in Vermont, and Foster, throughout the discussion, made a connection between the decisions made by the UVM Health Network and impacts on health care around the state.
The five-member board was unanimous in its decision to slash the UVM Medical Center’s budget proposal.
“Under current UVMHN management, we have seen unrelenting expense growth far exceeding inflationary metrics, dramatically declining quality across the University of Vermont Health Network hospitals, large and unnecessary health network executive compensation and bonuses, and a growing gap between the lowest-paid-patient-facing employees and network executives,” Foster said.
Annie Mackin, a spokesperson for the UVM Health Network, said the network would review the board’s budget orders on Sept. 30.
“Much work remains, and we and our partners will need to continue taking steps to improve affordability not just in this budget cycle, but in the months and years ahead,” Mackin wrote in an emailed statement.
