“In our rural region, as across the country, people are struggling with the cost of health care,” Stephen Leffler, M.D.’90, president and chief operating officer of the UVM Medical Center, CEO of UVM Health, and professor of emergency medicine at the Larner College of Medicine, told Becker’s Hospital Review. “UVM Health has committed to evolving as a health system to better meet the growing needs of our patients, while operating more cost effectively. We need to cut expenses, but improve quality and access at the same time.”
With that in mind, UVM Health, a rural academic health system with about 15,000 employees, has committed in 2026 not to cut any clinical services, despite significant financial pressures.
“To do that, everything’s a balance. If you’re going to have your expenses come down, without cutting clinical services, there has to be give on the support structures or the other functions that support that,” Dr. Leffler said. “We’ve committed to being transparent with our teams, our state and federal partners, and our communities, and are sharing information and the reasoning behind our decision-making as early and often as we can. Figuring out this balance of improving quality and access while reducing expenses is a tall order, but I believe our health system is up to the challenge, because we have to be.”