GMCB Sets Hospital Budget Targets

The Green Mountain Care Board has established budget targets for Vermont’s 14 hospitals that will add as much as $85 million to the $2.1 billion that is budgeted for the current fiscal year. The actual amount of new money will depend on a series of board decisions on individual hospital budgets before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. The minimum new money would be $64 million.

Analysis: Troubling Portents In GMCB Process

The Green Mountain Care Board is moving steadily toward establishment of a modestly credible budget inflation limit for the Vermont’s 14 hospitals for the coming fiscal year, a performance that would keep Gov. Peter Shumlin’s health reform initiative on track. But some troubling portents have showed up in the process so far.

State Board Sets 4 Percent Inflation Rate For Hospital Budgets

The Green Mountain Care Board has set forth a tentative target inflation rate of 4 percent for Vermont’s 14 hospitals for the coming fiscal year, a target that would add about $85 million to the current statewide spending level of $2.136 billion. The final system increase will depend on the board’s decisions on the individual hospitals’ requests.

Green Mountain Care Board Considers Controlling Health Costs

The odor of scorched tires, faint but unmistakable, figuratively hung over last week’s meeting between the Green Mountain Care Board and representatives of Vermont’s hospitals. For the first time, the rubber began hitting the road on health care cost containment in the state, the linchpin of Governor Peter Shumlin’s single payer reform initiative.

Analysis: Campaign Fails To Clarify Health Care Plans

Whoever wins the gubernatorial race in Vermont, the campaign has pretty much failed to illuminate the issue of health care reform, one of the most momentous the state has ever faced. Health care now eats up 20 percent of the state’s economic output and there is a broad consensus that the current trend is unsustainable.

Analysis: Evaluating Health Board’s Performance On Hospital Budgets

The Green Mountain Care Board has now completed its approval process for the coming year’s budgets for Vermont’s 14 hospitals. It was the board’s first effort and marked the third iteration in the state’s effort to regulate health care costs. The first was the Hospital Data Council that ran through the 1980s and early 1990s; that morphed into BISHCA, which first got the power to set budgets in the mid-1990s; and now the Green Mountain Care Board, which has the same powers as BISHCA, but should have far greater weight than its predecessor.