A year after it closed because of air circulation problems, the outpatient inpatient rehabilitation unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center’s Fanny Allen campus in Colchester is expected to reopen this fall, according to hospital president and chief executive officer Stephen Leffler. Work on the outpatient surgery center on the same campus is ongoing and could be completed next year.
Medical center leaders said they intend to replace the seven-bed surgical center with a new, larger facility in South Burlington by 2024. The 34-bed outpatient rehabilitation center would remain at the Colchester campus, along with other services such as urgent care and coronavirus testing.
The center in Colchester handled roughly 30 surgeries a day before it shut down last November. Hospital leaders have argued the unit is outdated and is not big enough to serve the needs of the greater Burlington area. They estimated the project could cost more than $30 million and have asked regulators for permission to fund a $5 million plan for the project.
The exact size of the surgical center, slated for South Burlington’s Mountain View Business Park, has not yet been determined, but the need for a larger facility is urgent, John Brumsted, president and CEO of UVM Health Network, wrote in a July 16 filing to the Green Mountain Care Board, the body that governs hospital growth.
“We are currently losing talented employees for lack of adequate — much less state-of-the-art — surgical and other care spaces, and we need to reverse this trend immediately,” he said in the filing.
In addition to the Fanny Allen inpatient rehabilitation unit, the campus at 729 College Parkway would continue to have a Covid-19 testing clinic and an urgent care center. The medical center currently leases these facilities, but it’s unclear what hospital leaders intend to do with the space when the lease expires in 2026.
Brumsted said revenue from the surgical center would subsidize money-losing services, including inpatient mental health and neonatal intensive care services.
“ … [I]n order to provide the full range of health care services to its community, a nonprofit hospital must subsidize money-losing services with those services that produce a positive operating margin,” he wrote. “To ignore that fact is to ignore the financial realities of medicine.”
The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, which represents more than 2,400 nursing and allied health providers at the hospital, said the proposed expansion is concerning, since hospital leaders have been “unwilling or unable to ensure adequate safe staffing for existing operations,” union President Deb Snell wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to the Green Mountain Care Board.
Snell pointed out that almost 30% of the jobs at the hospital remain unfilled, and union members worry an expansion of surgical capacity would worsen those challenges.
The hospital in Burlington has long struggled with staffing challenges, but pandemic-related pressures have made the problem worse. Across-the-board vacancies have caused a backlog in imaging, elective surgeries and specialist appointments. Those delays in service prompted the state government to investigate the backlog.
In its ruling Sept. 20, the Green Mountain Care Board acknowledged the hospital’s staffing challenges and said leaders must outline their plans for bringing on additional personnel. The board also said leadership has to consult the nurses’ union in the process.
Leffler, the medical center’s president and CEO, asked the care board to fast-track the health system’s $5 million project plan. The board granted the hospital’s request without a public hearing.
“We could have dragged it out several months,” Green Mountain Care Board Chair Kevin Mullin said Wednesday, but “if we dragged it out, you’d be asking me, ‘Why aren’t you doing something to have surgeries in the Chittenden County area?’”
Leffler agreed.
“There’ll be many, many opportunities for the public, for our staff and employees,” he said. “Anyone else is interested to go to public hearings and hear our thoughts and hear our answers, and we look forward to being fully transparent on this.”
Correction: Following publication of this story, a UVM Medical Center spokesperson said that Dr. Leffler misspoke when describing the expected completion date of the Fanny Allen campus renovations. The outpatient surgery center may not reopen until next year.
