The state’s largest healthcare provider is going through another significant round of layoffs.
University of Vermont Health announced Tuesday it would cut 76 employees system-wide. Another 66 will have to re-apply to restructured positions. Most will be administrative, UVM Health officials said, but some will involve employees who deliver patient care.
“These are extremely difficult decisions because of their impact on our valued colleagues,” UVM Health CEO Stephen Leffler said in a statement. “We must make these hard choices to ensure we can continue to provide high-quality care that is accessible and more affordable for the communities we serve.”
It’s estimated the cuts will save the network about $9.5 million a year, according to UVM Health spokesperson Annie Mackin.
Officials with AFT-Vermont, the union which represents nurses and support staff at the health system’s Vermont hospitals, said they were still trying to understand the full extent of the cuts. But they said that nurses working in primary care and obstetrics and gynecology were impacted, as were patient support specialists.
“Many of these positions are patient-facing or support patient care, and their elimination would have an enormous impact on the quality of care we're able to provide our community,” the union said in a statement.
UVM Health has been under tremendous pressure to reduce its expenses in recent years as health insurance premiums in Vermont have soared. Regulators, insurers and lawmakers have all homed in on the network’s high prices as a driving force behind the state’s spiraling healthcare costs.
The health system operates three hospitals in Vermont and three in upstate New York, as well as several outpatient clinics and a home health and hospice group. It has about 15,000 employees.
It announced widespread layoffs last summer as well, and then later cut several C-suite executives. And in its latest contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, the state’s largest commercial insurer, the hospital system also agreed to significantly lower reimbursements.
Those lower prices, in addition to other factors, are having an impact. Leffler told lawmakers in April that the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, the network’s flagship hospital, was losing $460,000 a day.
If it wants to straighten out its finances, the health system can’t lean on bringing in more business. Consultants hired by a state-appointed overseer recommended the network cut $300 million in expenses over the next three years, both to bring prices down and to prepare for expected Medicaid cuts. Regulators at the Green Mountain Care Board have also indicated they expect the hospital system to bring in less revenue next year compared to this year.
“That’s our problem in a nutshell. Usually the solution to these problems is revenue. It’s not going to be our solution, it has to be expense reduction,” Leffler said at the time.
