This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on April 24.
Lamoille Health Partners took quick action to avoid the eviction of its dental offices in Morrisville Plaza earlier this month, catching up on payments in arrears just as its landlord filed documents accusing the health care nonprofit of breaching its lease contract.
Savoy-Texas, LLC, the Delaware-incorporated group that owns the building occupied by Lamoille Family Dentistry, alleged in court filings that Lamoille Health Partners owed $50,000 in lease payments.
Peter Anderson, chair of the Lamoille Health board of directors, said the organization had caught up on lease payments just prior to the legal filing and that it was being withdrawn.
Lamoille Health Partners is also facing a lawsuit filed by its former Stowe landlords after it withdrew its primary care clinic earlier this year. The legal claim filed by Grandview Farms alleges it is owed $240,000 in back rent and an unpaid share of common-area maintenance of the building.
Susan Bartlett, Lamoille Health board member and interim CEO, said the organization’s failure to make its lease payments on the Morrisville dentistry was due to a lack of cash on hand, but the situation was stabilizing.
Bartlett said the goal now is to make more efficient use of the space at the dentistry office and consolidate some of its services there. Lamoille Health Partners, a federally qualified health center that provides primary care, pediatric care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment and dental care to around 19,000 people, is currently undergoing an organization-wide, $2 million cost-cutting effort and exploring a merger with Copley Hospital.
The dentistry, one of the few in the Lamoille County area that accepts adult patients with Medicaid insurance, has a months-long waitlist for new patient appointments.
Lamoille Health’s federally qualified status allows it to be reimbursed by Medicaid at a higher rate than other health care providers and allows patients to pay for services on a sliding scale, but its already dire financial situation is further challenged by massive cuts to Medicaid being considered at the federal level by the Republican-controlled Congress.
Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, R-Glover, raised the alarm regarding the potentially devastating health care cuts being considered at a recent Lamoille County legislative breakfast and again at a forum hosted by Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., in Stowe earlier this month, calling out specifically the threat posed to the state’s 11 federally qualified health centers.
Bartlett, who served as Lamoille County’s state senator for decades, said she didn’t envy current lawmakers and called the threatened cuts “truly terrifying.”
“It’s the chaos of not knowing,” she said. “Once you know, you can start to make some concrete plans and start to make what will be difficult choices, but it’s so hard to do any of that when you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
