Health-care budget workshop recommends 1-year extension for outreach, asks DMH for funding details on Forward Center positions

Participants at a health-care budget workshop recommended extending a community outreach program for one year and asked the Department of Mental Health (DMH) to return with explicit budget language explaining how positions tied to the Forward Center Northeast Indian Human Services will be funded and incorporated, attendees said.

A staff member who opened the discussion said, "Recommend base funding, and I'm putting a proposal out to the committees. We agreed yesterday that we were gonna put language in, that we were gonna keep the community outreach program for 1 more year." The staff member added that the group wants DMH to describe "how they intend to fund and incorporate all these things."

The request for clarification followed conflicting descriptions of positions associated with the Forward Center. The staff member said, "there was information given that it was just 2 positions within pediatric practices. I think we then heard subsequent testimony from Howard Center that it actually included 5 positions," and noted that the positions are "billable in different ways" and therefore could be at risk if not funded.

The workshop did not record a formal roll-call vote. Instead, participants reached a working recommendation to extend the community outreach program for one year and to ask DMH to draft budget language and return with funding and integration details. A staff instruction at the session asked participants to submit written priority lists to streamline final tallying: "Everybody take the sheet, then take a piece of paper and print 2 lists on time base and then put the number," the staff member said.

Attendees spent the remainder of the session compiling and ranking base and one-time funding priorities. Multiple participants repeatedly listed home health, Bridges to Health, Federally Qualified Health Centers/bi-state community health centers (FQHCs), the MSP program, and a medical-student incentive/scholarship program among top priorities for base or one-time funding. Rosie, identified at the meeting as a committee member, summarized a line of argument about system design, saying, "I am really focusing on primary care. Everything, I think we have to build our system from the bottom up."

Participants also referenced payment- and provider-focused items discussed elsewhere in the packet, including Vermont Medical Society payment-reform items and Vermont Care Partners programs. Workshop speakers noted several items as ‘‘base’’ requests and others as ‘‘one-time’’ pilot or scholarship funding; the group corrected and clarified duplicate line items during the exercise.

Next steps recorded in the session: staff will draft proposed budget language to be circulated to members and DMH will be asked to return with a written explanation of how the Forward Center positions are funded and how they overlap with mobile crisis, community outreach, and pediatric-practice roles. The workshop did not adopt budget language at the meeting and did not record a formal, binding vote on funding levels.

Minutes and the written priority sheets compiled at the session will be used to prepare the group's recommendations for whichever formal committee or budget office will receive them.