[L]awmakers on the Senate Finance Committee slammed the University of Vermont Health Network on Friday for proposing to spend excess revenue in fiscal year 2015 on population health and health care reform initiatives.
The state’s largest hospital system recommended Thursday to give $15 million to nonprofit organizations and the Shumlin administration’s health care reform efforts after taking in $35.4 million more in fiscal year 2015 than state regulators approved.
The network, comprised of UVM Medical Center and Central Vermont Medical Center, estimates that the amount they went over budget in fiscal year 2015 was $29.1 million. The hospitals are using internal numbers and accounting for a small overage that regulators allow.
“It’s not their money,” said Sen. Richard Westman, R-Lamoille. “It’s ratepayers’. It’s people that pay premiums, and it’s the state that runs the Medicaid program. It’s collectively not their money.”
“It is presumptuous of them to put out a list of basically spending items and say, ‘This is the way that we’re going to spend the money,’” Westman said. “The Green Mountain Care Board should treat them in the same manner they’ve treated other hospitals.”
Westman sits on the board of Copley Hospital in Morrisville. He said the hospital had to reduce how much it charges commercial insurers by 4 percent when it went over budget.
In the same fiscal year that UVM Medical Center and Central Vermont Medical Center went over budget, Northwestern Medical Center did, too. The hospital was required to cut the rate it charges commercial insurers by 8 percent.
When news of the UVM Health Network’s excess revenue first came to light, Al Gobeille, chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, said if the hospital was forced to cut rates, they would go down approximately 3 percent.
Data from the Vermont Department of Health says that about half of Vermonters, including 68 percent of adults, use commercial insurance. In the same year, data from the Green Mountain Care Board shows hospitals received 55 percent of their revenue from commercial insurers.
Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, said UVM Medical Center’s decision to give money away was “laudable,” but lawmakers ought to be able to consider how to give that money back to the state’s Medicaid program.
Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, said, “I think we need to review that (network) decision.”
Al Gobeille, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, was unavailable Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, he said there needed to be “balance” in determining how to return money to ratepayers.
Michael Carrese, a spokesperson for the UVM Health Network, said their proposal “follows what we think is an appropriate direction set by the Board and Northwestern Medical Center last year to devote funds to both rate relief and addressing urgent health needs in our communities.”
Carrese added: “Ultimately all of the elements of our plan aim to achieve the goal we share with the state and general public to improve people’s health and keep costs as low as possible.”
