by Hamilton E Davis
In my last post, I said that there was nothing in the record to indicate that Dr. Steve Leffler, who was named interim CEO of the UVM Health Network in the wake of Sunny Eappen’s sudden decision to resign his post, had the ability to handle the top job. Last week, Leffler seemed to confirm that skepticism when he addressed the Network employees. The speech took just a few minutes, and consisted of a few “rah, rah Team,” platitudes, relieved only by a few cliches.
The one sentence that stood out was Leffler’s assurance that there “will be changes, and they will come quickly.” That was on Friday of last week. Monday, yesterday, was Leffler’s first official day on his new job. And the first news from the Network was that Jason Williams, the $600,000 a year senior vice president in charge of external affairs for the Network, had “resigned” his job.
A Vermont Journal believes that Sunny’s resignation was real. My tiny corps of brilliant readers is free to believe the same of Williams’s, in the same sense that they are free to believe in the Easter Bunny…In any event, getting rid of Williams was one the most significant structural moves made by the UVM system in a decade.
Unfortunately for Leffler, the follow-on issues will be much more difficult: the way the Vermont and New York hospitals govern themselves is fraught. There are two Boards of directors, one for the seven integrated hospitals and a second for just the 500-bed UVM Medical Center Hospital in Burlington. Whose views are going to prevail? The Network Board should be the single driver because a steady flow of patients from New York into Burlington’s high-end subspecialists is key to keeping unit costs low across the system. The Green Mountain Care Board, however, hates the New York tie.
Moreover, no one has any idea how to link the 11 non-UVM Vermont hospitals into an integrated system that makes sense. And the height of the weeds beyond that is striking. The person actually running the Network today is Mike Smith, Gov. Phil Scott’s fixer who has no credentials for that job. Neither Scott nor Jason Gibbs, his chief of staff, have any idea how to manage a north of three-billion-dollar medical delivery company. As for the Green Mountain Care Board and its staff, their performance has been abysmal.
Governance, in short, is the ultimate challenge.
These dilemmas won’t go away soon, but for the near future, there is a new sheriff in town. His success or failure will be critical to every Vermonter.