Green Mountain Care Board outlines year‑long hospital budget review, adds operating‑expense benchmark and seeks better price reporting

Matthew Sutter, a staff member of the Green Mountain Care Board, told the Vermont Health Care Committee on March 22 that the board’s hospital budget‑review process runs year‑round and that the board has added a new operating‑expense benchmark for 2025 and is tightening reporting requirements to capture commercial price changes and network‑level dynamics.

Sutter described the guidance development timeline that begins with internal post‑mortems after the prior season, moves to draft guidance in January, a public draft presentation in February and a finalized guidance by March. Hospitals must submit budget materials to the board by July 1.

“We added an operating expense benchmark this year,” Sutter said, explaining the measure was intended to capture cost trends the board believed were not being controlled by revenue‑focused limits alone. He said the board also asked hospitals to provide more detailed “rate‑decomposition” worksheets and monthly actuals in the same account structure as their budget so staff can compare year‑to‑date performance with submitted budgets.

Why it matters: The board’s guidance shapes the…