Sunil “Sunny” Eappen, the president and CEO of the University of Vermont Health Network who has faced mounting criticism as health care costs have soared in the state, is resigning.
Steve Leffler, the president of the UVM Medical Center, will take over on an interim basis starting October 15, the network announced in a press release Thursday.
“It’s been my privilege to be part of this team, to see firsthand the way the people of this organization take care of our patients, our communities and each other,” Eappen said in a statement. “But I believe – based on everything that’s happening and all of the external pressures on our rural health system – that this organization needs to move forward in a different way.”
Eappen, who has led the network since 2022, will stay on through December to help with the transition. Tom Golonka, the chair of the UVM Health Network board of trustees, emphasized in an interview that the split was amicable and mutual.
But Golonka also said Eappen’s departure was intended to demonstrate the network, which operates six hospitals in Vermont and New York, understood the need to change.
“We're serious about affordability, access and quality, and we hear the messages from the community members and the regulators that we need to do better,” he said.
Vermont’s health care costs — long higher than the national average — have grown dramatically in the last several years.
Eappen’s decision to cut services in response to calls to curb costs prompted public protests. And bonuses that added up to millions of dollars for network executives, including Eappen, also prompted condemnation from the public and scrutiny from regulators.
Prices at the network’s flagship hospital, the UVM Medical Center in Burlington, have been a key cost driver behind the state’s nation-leading insurance premiums, and Eappen’s ouster comes just a week after regulators cut nearly $90 million from the medical center’s budget.
At the time, Owen Foster, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, which approves hospital budgets, publicly castigated the network for allegedly using revenues at UVMMC to shore up the New York hospitals in their portfolio.
Chris Pearson, a board member for Vermont Healthcare 911, a healthcare advocacy group that has primarily targeted its criticism at the UVM Health Network, said he hoped Eappen’s departure signaled a genuine desire to change course.
“We'll be ready to help if it is an honest signal of a new direction,” he said.
