State regulators have fast-tracked a request from the University of Vermont Medical Center to build a $112.4 million information technology system.
The Green Mountain Care Board, which regulates hospital revenue and major capital investments in health care, has approved an expedited review process for issuing a certificate of need for the project.
The board has allowed the UVM Medical Center to use the expedited review process in the past, including in two different cases in 2016 when the hospital sought to buy more than $5 million in new equipment.
Green Mountain Care Board rules allow hospitals to use an expedited review process for several reasons, including if they apply for a certificate of need “for the purchase or lease of information technology.”
The UVM Medical Center argued in its application for the certificate of need that the rule “permits expedited review for all (certificate of need) applications for information technology, regardless of cost.”
The hospital is seeking to set up the $112.4 million system over several years to integrate electronic health records at all of the network’s doctor offices and four of its hospitals: the UVM Medical Center in Burlington; Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin; Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, New York; and Elizabethtown Community Hospital in Elizabethtown, New York.
Dr. John Brumsted, the chief executive officer of the UVM Medical Center and the umbrella UVM Health Network, has called the project “transformational.”
