Grace Cottage Is Here To Stay!
Despite the alarmist and inaccurate recommendations of a widely-criticized report issued by Vermont’s Green Mountain Care Board’s consulting firm (Oliver Wyman), Grace Cottage Family Health & Hospital is busier than ever, caring for a record number of patients in our community, for a wide variety of healthcare needs. We know that this area needs and deserves to have care close to home and that this report has the potential to cause harm to patients and to our community. Grace Cottage has been here for the past 75 years and will continue to be here for the long term because of you: patients, donors, and supporters; this is why we must make our voices heard.
We hope you will join us and share your concerns at an in-person Community Forum that Grace Cottage will be hosting on Thursday, October 24 at 5 p.m. in the Townshend Town Hall; all are welcome to attend and refreshments will be served. No RSVP is necessary. Your attendance in support of Grace Cottage will send a clear message about what is at stake in our community.
For those of you who would like to know more, a list of the consultant’s recommendations and our response is below. At Grace Cottage, we will continue to work closely with our healthcare partners in the Windham County area to deliver excellent quality care for our patients:
Grace Cottage and State-wide Recommendations that we are already doing or strongly support:
| Recommendation | Response |
|---|---|
| Implement Telemedicine | We already use Dartmouth Health for TeleED, TeleNeuro, TelePharmacy and TelePsych services. |
| Implement Advanced Practice Provider (Physician Assistant/Nurse Practitioner) staffing model in the Emergency Department. | This was implemented years prior to the published report. |
| Construct new primary care clinic with urgent care capabilities. | We have been working hard toward this goal for the past two years and have raised almost 50% of the total amount needed for permits, design, and construction of a new 23,000 sq-ft. building. |
| Expand imaging capabilities with existing machinery. | This work is already being implemented, adding several of types of preventive screenings. |
| Expand outpatient rehab. | Demand for our outpatient rehab services has almost doubled. We began extensive renovations for an expanded Outpatient Rehab Center in the Heins Building in May (prior to published report) and expect to be opening the larger facility by late November 2024. |
| Statewide shared electronic medical records. | We wholly support this initiative, as it would greatly reduce manual labor (such as faxing and scanning) and increase efficiency, but state coordination and funding would be required. |
| Many other statewide recommendations. | Affordable housing, better transportation for patients, top-of-license practice for health care workers, etc. All greatly-needed initiatives in Vermont. This work will require hundreds of millions of dollars in state support to build and develop. |
Recommendations (not mandates) that would negatively impact our community and our patients:
| Recommendation | Response |
|---|---|
| Reduce 24-hour Emergency Department service to 16-hour Urgent Care. | Our Emergency Department is busier than ever, with a record 4,251 patient visits this year. 695 of these ED visits took place between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. This change would have a negative impact on the patients that we serve. |
| Consider becoming a Rural Emergency Hospital (REH). | This is a relatively new Federal designation, and under current rules we would not be able to continue our comprehensive inpatient physical, functional, and restorative rehabilitation (“swing bed”) program or continue to operate Messenger Valley Pharmacy. This is not a viable recommendation at this time. |
| Shift inpatient acute beds to other organizations. | Acute inpatient stays are a very small percentage of our inpatient volume (they are mostly swing bed stays). These acute stays are important to transition a patient from our ER to their home or to a higher level of care. It would be expensive and unnecessary to transport a patient to another hospital when we can provide the same service here. |
| Provide outpatient ambulatory surgery. | This is not a reasonable or appropriate recommendation. Brattleboro Memorial Hospital provides excellent surgical services. We don’t have the surgeons, anesthesia, space, sterilizing equipment or, most importantly, the volume in this area to support such a venture. It would be extraordinarily expensive to implement and not appropriate for our community when there is a hospital 19 miles away that provides these high-quality services. |
| Become an inpatient mental health or geriatric-psych hospital. | The Brattleboro Retreat is an excellent mental health facility, and we wholly support their expansion of inpatient care. It would be extraordinarily expensive to hire staff and renovate space to accommodate this recommendation and it’s not appropriate when the Brattleboro Retreat, only 18 miles away, provides these high-quality services. |
Learn More
For more information about Grace Cottage’s response to the Oliver Wyman report, you may be interested in reading a recent Brattleboro Reformer article, and a subsequent article in The Commons.
If you would like to reach out via e-mail to our Windham county delegation of state legislators to let them know what Grace Cottage means to you, their contact information is below:
Michele Bos-Lun mboslun@leg.state.vt.us
Mollie Burke mburke@leg.state.vt.us
Heather Chase hchase@leg.state.vt.us
Sara Coffey scoffey@leg.state.vt.us
Leslie Goldman lgoldman@leg.state.vt.us
Wendy Harrison wharrison@leg.state.vt.us
Nader Hashim nhashim@leg.state.vt.us
Emilie Kornheiser ekornheiser@leg.state.vt.us
Emily Long elong@leg.state.vt.us
Michael Mrowicki mmrowicki@leg.state.vt.us
Tristan Roberts troberts@leg.state.vt.us
Laura Sibilia lsibilia@leg.state.vt.us
Tristan Toleno ttoleno@leg.state.vt.us
The Green Mountain Care Board website has a place for public comments at:
https://gmcboard.vermont.gov/board/comment
Grace Cottage Hospital is Perfectly Healthy
Flu Shot Clinics
We will be offering a Flu Shot Clinic on Saturday, November 2 from 9 a.m. until noon, at Grace Cottage Family Health. Pre-registration is recommended (call 802-365-4331); walk-ins will be accommodated as space permits. You do not need to be an established patient at Grace Cottage to get a flu shot at these clinics; anyone under 18 years of age must be accompanied by a parent/guardian. Most insurance covers flu shots; please bring an ID and insurance card with you. If you are not insured, payment for your flu shot is expected at the time of service.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone six months of age and older get an annual flu vaccine. People over age 65 or those with any chronic disease, such as diabetes or asthma, have a higher risk of contracting the flu and are especially urged to get the shot.
Two different flu shots are being offered this year, one for those age six months to 64 years, and another for those who are 65 and older. Flu shots are also available at Grace Cottage weekdays by appointment; call 802-365-4331.
For more information about flu shots or the flu in general, visit the national CDC and Prevention website (www.cdc.gov), the Vermont Department of Health website (www.healthvermont.gov), or call the Vermont helpline at 2-1-1.
Grace Cottage Wins Worksite Wellness Gold Award
The Vermont Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports announced that, for the third year in a row, Grace Cottage has received the Governor’s Excellence in Worksite Wellness Award – Gold Level.
This award recognizes Grace Cottage’s efforts to enhance productivity, bolster a healthy environment, and improve employee wellbeing. The 2024 award was presented in Burlington, VT on October 10 and was accepted by Patti Osten, Kendra Canon and Jen Newman (middle left to right) from Grace Cottage.
I hope that you’re enjoying the beautiful Vermont fall foliage – I certainly am. Having grown up in Canada and having lived most recently in New Orleans, I’d forgotten how beautiful this season can be!
Olivia Sweetnam, CEO
