Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Copley Hospital, in partnership with Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H) Connected Care, is expanding Copley’s TeleHealth services to include TeleNephrology and TelePulmonology in addition to TeleRheumatology. The partnership brings together D-H specialists and Copley’s patients via telemedicine to provide evaluations, follow-up exams and recommendations for relevant therapies or interventions. These specialty services use live, two-way secure video on large format, high-definition mobile carts in the Multi-Specialty Clinic at Copley Hospital.

TeleNephrology and TelePulmonology will start in October. These new services will help overcome current barriers to accessible care and improve access for patients living with renal and respiratory diseases and disorders in the greater Lamoille Valley area. In addition, a
second D-H TeleRheumatology provider, Stephanie Mathew, DO, has been added to the service.

Vermont Business Magazine After PETA shared a horrifying video exposé of China's badger-brush industry with The Vermont Country Store, the Manchester-based retailer banned badger hair. According to the PETA report, its Asia's eyewitness investigation revealed that in order to make brushes used for shaving, makeup, and paint, badgers are captured using snares and other cruel methods while others are bred and confined to small wire cages on farms before being violently killed.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Department of Public Safety is receiving $400,000 from the Department of Justice to fund new school safety initiatives. The DPS said in a statement that federal grants will pay for programs that allow the whole community to play a role in protecting schools.

"There's no single strategy to follow to make our schools safe," Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Thomas Anderson said. "School safety is not just about locking doors - it requires partnerships at the local level in order to ensure the network that supports our children is strong and has the tools it needs. These funds will help us continue with a multi-faceted approach to ensuring our kids enjoy a safe learning environment."

by John McClaughry For a century or more politicians and economists and have argued about the relationship, if any, between economic freedom and human wellbeing. The Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading market-oriented think tank, has just released its 2018 report on Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) to provide hard data to answer this question. These reports have been issued annually since 1980.

Vermont Business Magazine 107.1 Frank FM’s TJ Michaels and Auctioneer Extraordinaire Jamie Polli will headline Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice’s 19^th Annual Seasons of Life Fashion Show, Live Auction, and Dinner, Friday, October 26 at the Capitol Plaza Hotel & Conference Center in Montpelier.

Vermont Business Magazine The Ladies League at the Lake Saint Catherine Country Club hosted the 5th Annual Donna Taft Memorial Golf Tournament on June 16, 2018. The event raised $2,200 to benefit the Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center, part of Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC) and Southwestern Vermont Health Care (SVHC). An additional, $2,200 donation was made to Rutland Regional Medical Center’s Foley Cancer Center.

Southwestern Vermont Medical Center’s Director of Oncology Services Jean Huntington (left) and Dr. Matthew Vernon, radiation oncologist at the Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center (right) stand with Mary Landon, a Southwestern Vermont Medical Center volunteer and a committee member of the Donna Taft Memorial Golf Tournament.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott and members of his Cabinet will be in Orleans County on Tuesday, October 9 for its eighth Capitol for a Dayvisit. The initiative has brought the Governor and dozens from his Cabinet and Extended Cabinet to Rutland, Caledonia, Windsor, Franklin, Bennington, Addison and Chittenden counties since the start of the summer.

“It’s so important for those of us in state government to get outside Montpelier and listen to Vermonters around the entire state, because each community has unique challenges and opportunities,” said Scott.

Capitol for a Day gives local constituents, municipal governments and other partners the opportunity to connect directly with State leadership and staff. The Administration will visit each of the state’s 14 counties as part of this initiative.

Follow along on social media using the #VTCapitol4aDay hashtag.

Vermont Business Magazine The Winooski River Apartments, consisting of three buildings (11 Bailey Avenue, 15 Baldwin Street, 37 Barre Street) have undergone an extensive rehab to address structural issues, weatherization, energy efficiency and ADA requirements. The goals of this project were to rehabilitate the properties such that they will be affordable to Vermonters in perpetuity, mitigate any potential hazards (lead and asbestos), extend the useful life of the buildings by at least 20 years, and to increase energy efficiency. As a result of the rehab, the City of Montpelier has been strengthened as a diverse community with the availability of more high-quality, affordable housing units, raising the bar for housing stock in Montpelier.

Vermont Business Magazine Hunger Free Vermont has been awarded a $25,000 grant from Newman’s Own Foundation, the independent foundation created by the late actor and philanthropist, Paul Newman. The award to Hunger Free Vermont was made by Newman’s Own Foundation as part of its commitment to address issues of fresh food access and nutrition education.

The grant to Hunger Free Vermont will be used to help power their Child and Family Nutrition Education Initiatives, providing opportunities for food insecure families to learn nutrition basics and how to prepare healthy foods on a tight budget, as well as their work to ensure that all vulnerable Vermont children gain access to stable sources of nutritious food they require for lifelong health and well-being.

by C.B. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine For the most part, Vermont's winter resorts find themselves well-positioned for the upcoming season, as general factors - a strong economy, a reasonably steady Canadian dollar, and continued infrastructure investment - give cause for optimism. And last winter, while hardly stellar, was not bad: It saw an uptick from the forgettable preceding season, with total skier-days rising by 1.2 percent to 3.96 million, according to Ski Vermont, the Vermont Ski Areas Association. The association's annual report described the figure as "just under the state’s ten-year average for visitation."

by Daniel Barlow, Public Policy Manager of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility Want to hear something obvious? Raising the minimum wage increases the take-home pay for low-income workers without hurting job growth. That’s not just a sound bite from Sen. Bernie Sanders – it’s now a proven economic fact. A study released this month from the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley shows that minimum wage increases are working as policy-makers intended: they increase pay for workers at the bottom and do not jeopardize job growth.

“For example, higher wages reduce employee turnover, thereby cutting employers’ recruitment and retention costs and increasing workers’ tenure and experience,” the report states. “Positive employment effects can also arise when higher minimum wages draw working age adults into the labor force or induce them to increase their hours.”

Vermont Business Magazine FirstLight, a leading provider of fiber-optic data, Internet, data center, cloud and voice services to enterprise and carrier customers throughout the Northeast, announced today that Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Scienceshas selected FirstLight as its primary hosted voice services provider. As ACPHS' primary Internet Service Provider for many years, the educational institution has expanded its relationship and selected FirstLight to provide a cloud-based phone solution to support their Albany, NY, and Colchester, Vermont, campus locations.