Dec 17, 2024
Copley Hospital in Morrisville on Oct. 19, 2023. File photo by Carly Berlin/VTDigger and Vermont PublicLamoille County practitioners and community members are pushing Copley Hospital to keep its birthing center open, reflecting anxiety about the state of community hospitals in the wake of a sobering health care report.Faced with financial headwinds, some hospitals and medical facilities across the state have already begun to halt procedures and cut staff. At Copley, many fear that the Morrisville hospital’s birthing unit could be next.“While the financial crisis facing Vermont hospitals is real, eliminating this essential service would be a betrayal of Copley’s mission to promote the wellness of our community,” reads an undated open letter, signed by more than 60 midwives, doctors, nurses and community members, that was provided to VTDigger last week.Copley providers believe the hospital’s leadership is considering closing the birthing center, according to the letter. But in interviews, two signatories declined or were unable to provide details about the reason for that belief. VTDigger has not been able to confirm that Copley is considering shutting the birthing center. Wayne Stockbridge, Copley’s chief administrative officer, said in an interview that the hospital’s leadership has not “to my knowledge” proposed closing the unit.“I understand there may be some concern,” Stockbridge said. “But no decision has been made whatsoever.”Even so, the letter reflects the anxiety felt in many communities in the wake of a landmark report that recommends significant restructuring — including the closures of multiple hospital units — across Vermont. “Since I’ve started at Copley in June of 2020, we’ve helped at least somewhere between six and eight hundred families to bring a baby into the world,” Erinn Mandeville, a nurse midwife who signed the letter, said in an interview. Without the hospital’s birthing center, “that’s 600 to 800 families in a four-and-a-half year period that would be having to drive one, two-plus hours to (the University of Vermont Medical Center) or somewhere else to get their care.”READ MORE Closing the birthing center would send the message “that it’s terribly financially inconvenient to take good care of people who are bringing life into the world,” she said. In September, the consulting firm Oliver Wyman issued a highly anticipated 144-page report proposing changes to Vermont’s health care system. With an aging population and fast-rising care costs, Vermont hospitals — most of which are operating in the red — need to take major steps to stay financially sustainable, the report said. Those recommendations envision a system in which certain hospitals specialize in certain types of procedures and reduce or eliminate others. The consulting firm suggested that Copley Hospital downgrade its emergency department, halt some infrequent medical procedures and, in the long run, either “grow or shift birthing to other organizations.”In its 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, Copley had a negative operating margin, according to figures compiled by the Green Mountain Care Board, the state’s health care regulator. In 2023, the hospital had an operating loss of about $1.7 million, although it was expected to have a small positive margin in 2024.Multiple Vermont hospitals are already implementing cuts to services, although not all in response to that report.  Last month, the University of Vermont Health Network announced a series of wide-ranging cuts to its Vermont facilities. Those cuts include reducing the number of beds at UVM Medical Center in Burlington from 450 to 400, closing clinics in the Mad River Valley, and shuttering an inpatient psychiatry unit at Central Vermont Medical Center. Network leaders blamed those cuts on orders from the Green Mountain Care Board limiting how much revenue network hospitals could bring in from patient care.In Randolph, Gifford Medical Center eliminated its chiropractic and urogynecological programs at the beginning of November “to focus on our core services and strengthen our financial position over the long term,” Maryellen Apelquist, a spokesperson, said in an email.“We are not considering closing other Gifford service lines at this time,” Apelquist said.This year, North Country Hospital has also decided not to replace an outgoing urologist and orthopedic surgeon. That has left the Newport hospital without the capacity to do hip or knee replacements or certain urological procedures, CEO Tom Frank said in an interview. Those decisions were made completely independent of the consultant’s report, Frank said. The hospital, which has reported operating losses of roughly $18 million across 2022 and 2023, also eliminated two vice president roles, he said. “We made tough decisions here to turn things around,” Frank said. “We’re actually doing very well — much better financially.”At Copley Hospital, administrators are still reviewing the report’s recommendations and have made no decisions about whether or where to cut services, according to Stockbridge, the hospital’s chief administrative officer.“Everything’s possible, right?” Stockbridge said. “But all I’m trying to say to you is, it’s premature at this point.”Read the story on VTDigger here: As some Vermont hospitals trim services, staff and community members urge Copley to keep birthing center open. ...read more read less
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