Rutland Regional makes play for sports medicine
Proximity to the Killington and Pico ski resorts has led the Rutland Regional Medical Center to develop a specialty in the treatment of sports-related injuries. The medical center maintains an orthopedic clinic at the base of the mountain as well as a unit in the hospital on Allen and Stratton roads in Rutland.
Two members of the United States ski team and two National Football League players have been treated at the orthopedic facilities. In addition, two of the medical center’s staff orthopedists are affiliated with the US skiing and snowboarding teams, notes Larry Jensen, the medical center’s vice president for corporate development.
The presence of such prestigious practitioners notwithstanding, the Rutland hospital has difficulty attracting physicians to fill openings in a 125-member staff of doctors trained in 35 specialties, Jensen acknowledges.
Many young physicians can choose among offers from various parts of the United States as well as from other countries, and some are strapped with education debts of as much as $200,000, Jensen notes. Budget constraints prevent the Rutland medical center from competing with the more lucrative opportunities available to doctors at other institutions.
In fact, Rutland recently had to trim a pension plan for 330 members of a nurses’ union at the medical center. In a new arrangement accepted by the union, the medical center is replacing a defined-benefit plan totaling about $10 million a year with a defined-contribution plan that will cost the institution about half as much.
“It was a very difficult decision for us to make,” Jensen says. “It does significantly diminish the value of the retirement program, but we saw no sustainable options over the foreseeable future.”
The move reflects the gap between the actual costs of services provided by the medical center and what the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs pay as reimbursements. This so-called contractual allowance amounts to $78.4 million a year, Jensen says.
The nonprofit medical center’s gross revenues for the most recent fiscal year totaled $212.5 million. If the federal medical insurance programs for the elderly and the poor covered the full costs of services, the medical center could reduce its overall charges to other patients by about 32 percent, Jensen adds.
The hospital recorded 125,000 outpatient visits in the fiscal year ending last October. It also registered a total of 33,000 inpatient bed days. The medical center is licensed for 188 beds. The 110-year-old hospital serves as an institutional cornerstone of Rutland County. In addition to ranking as one of the county’s two largest employers , the medical center sponsors or takes part in a number of community initiatives. Among them is an athletic training and rehabilitation program for high school athletes.
The medical center underwent a major expansion in the 1990s when it added operating rooms and again in 2003 when it constructed a new emergency department.