BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Budget cuts at UVM Health Network mean the dialysis center in St. Albans will be handed off to another medical organization or shuttered.
41-year-old Nathan Thibault comes to UVM’s dialysis center in St. Albans three times a week after he gets off work. “It’s not really until you’re at face with your mortality, and you’re close to death that you start to really think to yourself that, ‘this is worth trying to do everything I can to stay alive,’” he said.
It takes him about five hours each visit to get through treatment before he can go home and see his wife and kids, so he spends his time waiting in the seat getting close to the staff.
“When I’m here I feel like I’m at home. The patients are like family,” said Dialysis Technician and UVMMC union member Janet Wells.
But this home may be gone for good. UVM Health Network announced that it will end the staffing and operation of Thibault’s clinic and other rural clinics like it in Newport and Rutland over the next couple of months. They’re trying to get the neighboring hospitals, in this case Northwestern Medical Center, to acquire them.
“And they’ll have to figure out the margin because each of those hospitals will most likely lose money in the end by delivering that care,” said UVMMC CEO Sunil “Sunny” Eappen.
Medicare pays for most dialysis patients in the U.S., including Thibault. Federal insurance reimburses hospitals at a fraction of the almost $100,000 cost per patient per year. In rural and poorer areas like St. Albans, Newport, and Rutland, Medicaid is used at a greater rate and reimburses even less than Medicare.
“A second option would be for the national services to come in and do that, and our last option, and it really is our last option, would be to find dialysis centers outside of the state,” said Eappen.
It would take Thibault an hour and a half to two hours to get to clinics outside the state. He worries for his fellow patients, that the time burden would be too much to bear.
“It is a life or death situation for some people because if it was anywhere but here, I think they would be in some serious dire straits,” said Thibault.
Wells has been working at the clinic for 27 years. UVM promises to find her another job in the network, but Franklin County and these patients are her community.
“It would be hard to lose my pay and my seniority, my benefits. I’m not really sure that I could abandon ship,” said Wells.
WCAX reached out to the UVM Health Network and the Green Mountain Care Board to find out what the next steps are for this dialysis center, and they say they’re in their earliest stages and more information may be released next week.