Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Merchants Bank donated $8,000 to sponsor the Athletes Village at the Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival on Sunday, August 7^th. This is Dragonheart Vermont's eleventh year holding this event and Merchants Bank is overjoyed to have been involved each year. Funds raised during the Dragon Boat Festival stay in Vermont to benefit cancer programs. They have raised over $1.65 million since starting the annual festival in 2005.

Vermont Business Magazine The Norwich Bookstore has won the Book Publishers Representatives of New England Independent Spirit Award. The Independent Spirit Award is given annually at the NEIBA fall tradeshow to recognize the excellence in a bookstore member of the New England Independent Booksellers Association. Our rep members nominate bookstores for this award, and then we vote on the store we most believe stands for all that is great in New England bookselling. 

This year was extremely competitive, with an unprecedented five-way tie at one point! For that reason I want to call attention to the nominees – Bridgeside Books, Jabberwocky Bookshop, Oblong Books & Music and RJ Julia. They have an enormous amount of support amongst New England Sales Representatives! But there had to be a winner, and we have selected the Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, VT! 

Vermont Business Magazine Low taxes and good public education rarely go hand-in-hand, but a national rating firm is using those two key measures to help find family "richness." GOBankingRates surveyed all 50 US states and the District of Columbia on 12 different factors to find the places families can get the most out of life. Is there a place in America where families can have it all– high income, job security, safe neighborhoods, affordable child care job and a good education? New Hampshire ranked first and Vermont 16th. California was last.

Vermont Business Magazine The VT-NH Affiliate of Susan G Komen for the Cure has awarded a $20,000 grant to the Southwestern Vermont Health Care Foundation for support of the Breast Health Rural Outreach Program. The program is a cooperation between the Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center and the Women’s Imaging Center at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center and supports early detection by offering free or reduced-price screening or diagnostic mammograms for those without insurance or with high deductibles, especially those who do not qualify for other assistance programs. 

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Information Technology Leaders, Inc. (VITL) and OhMD announce a partnership that will bring a secure, HIPAA compliant text messaging service to Vermont health care providers and their patients.  Smartphone use is nearly universal, so secure text messaging in health care makes sense as a fast and easy communication option, and offers patients more opportunities to engage in their own care.

Vermont Business Magazine The federal government has released its first overall hospital quality rating last week, similar to the long-standing 5-Star CMS rating used for nursing homes. In Vermont, no hospital achieved a five star rating, and only Porter Hospital, Central Vermont Hospital and Brattleboro Memorial Hospital achieved four-star ratings. Most of the remaining Vermont hospitals earned either a three star rating, with three receiving a two sar rating (two were not rated).

Vermont Business Magazine Interim CEO Dr Fred Kniffin shared with Porter Medical Center employees on Monday that the PMC Board of Directors has identified the University of Vermont Health Network as its potential partner, should the Middlebury hospital system choose affiliation at the conclusion of Porter’s ongoing strategic planning process. The UVM Health Network was selected from among four institutions that responded to their affiliation request for proposals. He noted that determining the future of Porter Medical Center had entered a new phase, with the continued evaluation of independence versus entering into an affiliation agreement with the University of Vermont Health Network.

by Claudio Fort, CEO of North Country Hospital in Newport At North Country Hospital in Newport, improving the health of our community is our greatest responsibility. Every aspect of running this hospital – from budgeting, to planning for improvements, to deciding what services we can or should offer – is in service of helping the people of our region get and stay healthy.

Each year our team puts together a budget that reflects the health care priorities of our patients. Regulators at the Green Mountain Care Board examine it carefully and ask many questions about what’s necessary, how we’re participating in health care reform efforts, and how all of the pieces fit together into a responsible budget that does not lead to unnecessary insurance rate increases to our patients. This process is unique to the state of Vermont, and each one of Vermont’s hospitals participates in it every year.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont health officials are warning street drug users about an especially deadly strain of heroin that is circulating in several parts of the state, including central Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom. According to reports from emergency responders over the weekend, at least 10 people have overdosed, taking more than one dose of naloxone (Narcan) to be revived. While naloxone can reverse an overdose, it must be given quickly and followed up with a 9-1-1 call for an ambulance. The drug can last longer than naloxone or take more than one dose to help.

Bags of heroin, possibly laced with fentanyl, and stamped 'Game of Thrones' appear to be connected with some of the overdoses. Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, and that much deadlier.

Vermont Business Magazine During the spring of 2016, the Vermont Legislature approved an additional one million dollars in funding for the Child Care Financial Assistance Program in State Fiscal Year 2017. This increase will allow the Department for Children and Families' Child Development Division (CDD) to make changes that will benefit child care providers and families in Vermont. This will include an increase in the amount paid for infant care when the changes take effect August 21.

"We are very grateful to the Vermont Legislature for this increase," said CDD Deputy Commissioner Reeva Murphy. "It will allow us to make several changes that will benefit child care providers, parents and children in Vermont. In particular, this increase will help us begin to address the rates the State pays for infant care, an area that is challenging for both parents and providers."

The following changes will take effect on August 21, 2016:

Vermont Business Magazine A pair of autistic twins whose behavior, school attendance, and hygiene problems nearly exhausted efforts by educators and their own parents; a boy whose constant school absence and untreated ringworm were symptoms of his mother's hoarding and health issues; a quiet, 14-year-old girl who suffered physical and mental abuse from her alcoholic mother – these are just three cases of southern Vermont families in crisis that might have concluded with youngsters removed from their homes and placed into state custody.

Instead, all three cases and hundreds like them in Brattleboro and Springfield have ended far happier, thanks to the efforts of Healthcare & Rehabilitation Services of Southeastern Vermont (HCRS), funding from the Vermont Department of Children & Families (DCF), and a program called Intensive Family Based Services (IFBS).

by John McClaughry Most of us believe that “freedom” is a good thing - that we deserve to pursue our ends without unjust interference from others, so long as we don’t use our freedom to diminish that of others. We believe the state we live in ought to conscientiously protect the freedom of its citizens, limiting their individual freedom only when it is clear that its exercise would result in greater harm to society as a whole.

But governments today regularly, sometimes aggressively, interfere with our freedoms. Two scholars at the libertarian Cato Institute have put together a Freedom Index of the fifty states using some 150 variables. It identifies those states most, and least, protective of three dimensions of freedom: fiscal, regulatory, and personal.