We are working to deliver the care we know our communities need

Across University of Vermont Health Network, we are guided by the principle of providing access to high-quality care people in our region need, deserve and can afford. Recently, this has meant increasing nurse and staff wages to support our workforce, deploying innovative technologically-enabled strategies to reduce wait times, taking care of more people who needed more care than expected — many of them older and sicker — and grappling with increasing drug costs.

We have also been focused on better managing administrative costs within our control so that more of every dollar can go directly to providing medical care. Through this work, we have been able to keep expenses for behind-the-scenes support functions low when compared to other similar-sized academic health systems.

Despite this progress, we are facing major reductions to our Vermont hospital budgets this fiscal year. In the past, we managed cuts by reducing areas patients do not directly see but add stress and workload to our staff. This can be felt mostly through delayed improvements and frustrating wait times.

This year’s budget orders for our Vermont nonprofit safety net hospitals are significant enough that we have no choice but to make some reductions in the care we deliver in Vermont, in addition to further increasing behind-the-scenes expense cuts.

In the coming weeks and months, we will share our plan to deliver care within these restrictive limitations. This site will be one of many ways we will be sharing this information with our patients and communities.

There will be difficult decisions ahead. You have our promise they will be made with careful consideration and thought, but we know we will not be able to fully provide the level of care our communities need and deserve.

At the same time, we will continue to move forward with work we know is crucial to meeting the growing health care needs of our region, both now and in the future. This means we will continue to carefully invest in our workforce, facilities and operations.

Despite the challenges we face, we will continue to work together, problem-solve and innovate in order to provide the highest quality, accessible and affordable care possible—today, and for the long run.

Thank you for trusting us with your health care.