Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The Boys & Girls Club of Burlington awarded $80,000 in scholarships to 41 Club members on Thursday, May 16th as part of the Annual Pomerleau Scholarship Awards. The event celebrated the achievements of these hardworking students and the powerful legacy of Tony Pomerleau’s philanthropic work in the community being continued by his family.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) led a bicameral group of lawmakers in introducing the Opioid Crisis Accountability and Results Act, as Vermont Attorney General T J Donovan announced a lawsuit today against former Purdue Pharma CEO Richard Sackler and seven family members who served on Purdue’s Board of Directors for deliberately misrepresenting the risks of the drug OxyContin.

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General TJ Donovan has sued eight members of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma LP, makers of the opioid OxyContin, among others. The lawsuit alleges that for over two decades the Sacklers personally oversaw Purdue’s deceptive marketing campaign. They directed Purdue’s strategy to minimize the health risks of opioids, claiming that prescription drugs were rarely the cause of abuse, addiction, or death. The Sacklers also directed Purdue to promote higher dose products, which were more lucrative -- and more dangerous and addictive.

by Brandon Arcari, Vermont Business Magazine The University of Vermont Medical Center will open its new Miller inpatient building June 1, making available hundreds of new beds in private rooms to improve patient privacy. The project, costing an estimated $187 million, is the first major upgrade to the Medical Center’s inpatient facilities since the mid 1980s, adding 128 new patient rooms. Patient privacy upgrades mean that almost 90 percent of patients will have a private room with a bathroom, as opposed to the prior 30 percent.

Vermont Department of Public Safety Vermont Route 108 between Cambridge and Stowe, commonly known as Smugglers’ Notch, has reopened to traffic. Route 108 was closed due to a tractor-trailer that was stuck and blocking the road late morning Tuesday. Traffic was stopped from both the Cambridge and Stowe sides. Vermont DMV assisted with the tractor-trailer, no further details are yet available.

Driver ticketed after tractor-trailer gets stuck in the Notch 

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Vermont Business Magazine Mt Ascutney Hospital and Health Center (MAHHC) recently hosted a gathering of employees and friends at its second annual Nurses Week Awards, which recognizes nursing professionals who go above and beyond for their patients and colleagues. The event was held as part of National Nurses Week, which was celebrated from May 6 to May 12.

by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine National Life has released its 2018 Annual Report, which highlights a record-setting year on the company’s 170th anniversary, as life insurance sales have more than tripled over the last decade and its renowned foundation budget has reached $2 million. Revenues in 2018 were $1.9 billion compared to $2.3 billion in 2017. Net income was $150.1 million versus $260 million. Total assets were $30.4 billion versus $30.2 billion.

Vermont Business Magazine Newly released child care and school immunization data from the Vermont Department of Health shows that while a high number of Vermont children in child care and school have received all their required vaccines, a significant number of children are under-vaccinated – creating a danger that vaccine-preventable diseases like measles can take hold and spread

Vermont Business Magazine When it comes to inpatient treatment of a range of mental health and mood disorders — from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia, suicidality and acute psychotic episodes — a new study suggests that physical exercise is so effective at alleviating patient symptoms that it could reduce patients’ time admitted to acute facilities and reliance on psychotropic medications.

“The general attitude of medicine is that you treat the primary problem first, and exercise was never considered to be a life or death treatment option. Now that we know it’s so effective, it can become as fundamental as pharmacological intervention,” explains David Tomasi, a lecturer at the University of Vermont, psychotherapist and inpatient psychiatry group therapist at the University of Vermont Medical Center and lead researcher of the study.

Vermont Business Magazine Aspenti Health of South Burlington was named the winner of the Clinical Lab 2.0 Innovation Award, honoring innovation excellence in the clinical laboratory industry. The award was presented before a prestigious panel of national clinical laboratory leaders by the Clinical Lab 2.0 Movement (www.cl2lab.org) at the 24th Annual Executive War College Conference (www.warcollege.com) in New Orleans on May 2, 2019, the largest gathering of clinical laboratory executive leadership in the United States.

Vermont Business Magazine Brattleboro Memorial Hospital (BMH) and Community College of Vermont (CCV) are partnering again for an accelerated program to prepare qualified candidates for jobs as Certified Medical Assistants. Enrollment in the one semester program will be limited to twenty participants. Classes will be held on the CCV Brattleboro campus, and all clinical aspects of the course work will be completed at BMH. As part of the joint initiative, BMH is providing full scholarships for eight successful applicants. Scholarship recipients will have their CCV tuition covered and will be hired as Medical Assistants at BMH upon successful completion of the academic program and certification exam.

by John McClaughry My very good friend John M Mitchell died at 80 on March 28 in Rutland.  He was the CEO of Swiss-owned OMYA’s North American operations, managed from Proctor, until his retirement in 2000, and a founding director of the Ethan Allen Institute in 1993.

Elsewhere I have fondly remembered John for his personal qualities and service, but here I’d like to share the message he gave in 2006 to Vermonters about the way the State of Vermont regulates companies doing business here. In this talk he described not huge new projects, like Omya’s proposed Danby Mountain mine, but recurring regulatory practices imposed on operations that had gone on for years.