The University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington on Jan. 23 submitted a certificate-of-need application to the Green Mountain Care Board, seeking approval to buy the Fanny Allen campus for $17.3 million.
Tewksbury, Mass.-based Covenant Health owns the 22-acre campus in Colchester, Vt., which UVM Medical Center currently leases.
UVM said that securing the hospital's Fanny Allen-based operations is key to ensuring continuity of care for patients who access campus services and to improving long-term financial stability for the region's only tertiary care facility.
"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," UVM Medical Center President and COO Stephen Leffler, MD, said in a Jan. 23 news release. "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."
Purchasing the campus is a key part of the health system's long-term strategy to address patient access challenges and get ahead of a rapidly-aging and growing regional population. Outpatient surgery at Fanny Allen — which houses five outpatient surgical suites — accounts for just 11% of the clinical space operated by UVMMC on the campus and is not capable of meeting current or future demand for surgical services.
"UVM Medical Center's purchase of the Fanny Allen campus will make a lasting, positive impact on how patients across our region receive care, and our health system's finances," UVM Health Network President and CEO Sunny Eappen, MD, said. "Preserving and maintaining established clinical operations and facilities is both fiscally responsible and critical to our ongoing work addressing challenges to patients' timely access to care."
Last year, UVMMC submitted a CON seeking approval to build a $130 million outpatient surgery center near its Tilley Drive campus in South Burlington. The project was developed based on demand and demographic data showing rapid growth and aging in communities across the region, with UVMMC anticipating its surgical capacity to fall short of regional demand by nearly 4,800 cases — or about one year's worth of surgeries at Fanny Allen — by 2030.
By purchasing the Fanny Allen campus, UVMMC expects to save at between $4 million and $6 million over 15 years when compared to its current lease obligations.