The University of Vermont Medical Center announced plans to purchase the Fanny Allen campus, where the hospital currently leases space and operates clinics.
The medical center submitted documents Tuesday to the Green Mountain Care Board requesting approval to buy the 22-acre Colchester campus from Covenant Health, a Catholic health care system that owns the facility. It expects to pay $17.3 million for the complex, the hospital said. The hospital must seek a “certificate of need” from the care board due to the cost of the purchase.
“The Fanny Allen is a critical piece of our plan to meet the health access needs of Vermonters over the next decade, and preserving uninterrupted access to the wide variety of services on the campus must be a top priority,” Dr. Stephen Leffler, the hospital’s president and chief operating officer, said in a press release announcing the move.
“We refuse to gamble on that future, and so we must move now to secure this essential asset that serves the health and wellbeing of our patients,” Leffler said.
Administrators said the purchase is necessary to ensure that the hospital can continue to provide crucial care, especially as Vermont’s population ages and Chittenden County’s population continues to grow.
UVM Medical Center is also seeking to build a $130 million surgery center in South Burlington, an expansion it says is necessary to address the region’s increasing medical needs.
The medical center has occupied the Fanny Allen campus since the early 1990s. It pays roughly $1.7 million annually to lease the space, which holds facilities for surgery, rehabilitation, urgent care and lab work, among other functions.
The purchase will save “at least $4-6 million over a 15-year financing period when compared to its current lease obligations,” according to the press release.
Phillip Rau, a spokesperson for the medical center, said that the hospital had no current plans to renovate or upgrade the facility.
“We don’t have any immediate changes planned following the purchase, were it to be approved,” Rau said in an email.
However, “as part of our long-term facilities plan, we routinely evaluate our campus and facilities to determine whether changes, renovations or upgrades are necessary, sustainable and fiscally responsible,” he said.
