BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Facing budget constraints, the UVM Medical Center says it is temporarily pausing construction on its planned $130 million surgical center.
The decision comes as Vermont regulators have made the hospital tighten its budget for the new fiscal year.
“This is not the step we wanted to take, because we know this will delay our ability to reduce wait times for surgeries that patients desperately need,” UVM Medical Center president Stephen Leffler said in a statement. “We will continue to assess the situation and proceed as soon as we are able. In the meantime, we will do everything we can to minimize impacts on our patients, communities and staff.”
What was originally planned as a fall groundbreaking for the center will now pushed back. Officials say the delays mean opening in 2027 at the earliest.
Hospital leaders have said the state-of-the-art center will allow them to shift outpatient procedures away from the outdated Fanny Allen campus and begin to chip away at persistent backlogs. But the prospect of Vermont’s largest health care system grabbing an even bigger share of the market has worried some cash-strapped rural hospitals, which rely on revenue from outpatient surgeries to stay afloat.