Fiscal shock: The public deserves answers about BMH

Richard Davis, a retired registered nurse and tireless advocate for access to health care, is a former Brattleboro Reformer columnist. He continues to post his writing on his Facebook profile (bit.ly/575_davis) and on iBrattleboro.

BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro Memorial Hospital (BMH), our small community nonprofit hospital, is facing what looks like its most challenging financial situation in its 121-year history. It is frightening for the 807 employees (as of 2023, according to an August 2025 IRS 990 filing) who depend on the institution for their livelihood.

The prospect of having to lose access to a local hospital would also change the lives of 45,000 people who live in Windham County.

Sadly, it is not clear what is going on at the hospital because the board of directors has not said much other than putting the chief executive officer on leave. Hospitals are notorious for hiding their dirty laundry, and BMH is no exception. I worked there on and off for about 14 years, and I was always at odds with many of the higher-level management team.

There was one occasion that sums up this mentality. An employee was caught doing something blatantly illegal and, rather than call the police and be subject to public scrutiny, BMH decided to quietly fire him. Business as usual. I suspect that if they could have kept the current fiscal crisis out of the public eye, the BMH board would have tried to keep it quiet much longer.

But the organization that oversees hospitals, the Green Mountain Care Board, noticed irregularities in how BMH reported its financial status and made the following statement.

"We are deeply troubled by the quality of BMH's budget submission and its reporting because the hospital may be at risk of a sudden solvency crisis, which would potentially harm its community and the state-wide system of care," regulators wrote.

"We have a duty to establish hospital budgets that, among other items, ensure the economic operations of the hospital, preserve access and quality, and contain costs at BMH and the statewide health system," regulators continued. "We cannot fulfill this duty when a hospital misrepresents its financial data and then refuses to address its errors."

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There has been no public explanation by the BMH board of what is going on with the hospital's finances. The board is ultimately responsible for whatever happens at the hospital, and its collective silence raises a lot of questions that should be answered.

BMH is a nonprofit institution, and that means it is not paying taxes on its primary enterprise, the hospital. One would think that the board would feel an obligation to be straightforward with the public, but the opposite is the operational philosophy.

Why did they put the CEO on leave? Why is there no mention of the role the chief financial officer may have played in this crisis? Was the CEO feeding the board false information? Did the board members have accurate information and think that they could solve the problem on their own?

A number of years ago there was an effort to create a law that would require hospital board meetings to be open to the public in Vermont. The bill never got traction, partly because of the influence that hospital board members have in the community and partly because many legislators serve on hospital boards.

I remember one board member who said at the time, "If board meetings are open to the public I will resign." The smoke-filled-back-room decision-making process seems to be alive and strong in Vermont even if no one is smoking.

The crisis has been made even worse by the appointment of two board-member doctors to share the job of interim CEO. They are highly regarded and extremely competent medical providers, but having loyal insiders steer the ship that they, as board members, might have caused to veer off course is not the right move for this community.

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The public should be outraged at the way this situation is being handled by the board. We need answers now.

We need fresh eyes. We need someone without loyalty to anyone to work on cleaning up this mess.

I hope the board is looking for someone to replace the interim-CEO doctors as soon as possible, if even temporarily. If not, then all of us are being subjected to the outdated mentality of the doctor knows best.

The Green Mountain Care Board has threatened placing an independent observer to take over the hospital. That would be the first step down a slippery slope. The hospital could lose its autonomy as a locally focused institution and become more of a state-focused entity under the complete control of the Green Mountain Care Board.

If the BMH board places their own independent person to run the hospital, this community could retain some degree of control over the hospital's future.

We need to be vocal and demand transparency and accountability before it is too late.

This Voices Viewpoint by Richard Davis was written for The Commons.

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