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OneCare Vermont to shut down, ending major health care reform experiment

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OneCare Vermont to shut down, ending major health care reform experiment


A key player in health care payment reform in Vermont announced it will shut down by the end of 2025.

OneCare Vermont allowed hospitals, independent practices, home health agencies, and other providers to collaborate by sharing financial information and other data. And they provided monthly payments to more than a dozen independent primary care practices for quality outcomes, which gave those practices an additional revenue stream on top of billing for individual services, called a “fee-for-service” model.

The organization was also an expensive player in the state’s health care system — hospitals and state agencies paid millions of dollars each year to support OneCare, which had close to 40 employees. It’s unclear whether the nonprofit’s work resulted in commensurate savings, according to a report this year from the Green Mountain Care Board.

“I think we tried to, perhaps, be too many things to too many people,” said Abe Berman, the CEO of OneCare, in an interview last week.

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OneCare launched in 2016 as an experiment in how the state pays for health care, to get insurance companies and federal health insurance programs to compensate providers for quality measures with something called an “all-payer model.”

“It became a little bit of a panacea,” Berman said. “It was going to cure every ill in the system — and we know that’s not really how interventions work.”

The monthly payments that OneCare provided to some primary care practices help support patient services, like mental health care, care coordination, and other wrap-around services. After next year, those payments will go away.

“We are worried we are not going to be able to sustain that level of services for our patients,” said Dr. Toby Sadkin, a clinician at Primary Care Health Partners, a group with 10 offices in Vermont that covers thousands of patients throughout the state. Sadkin is also a member of OneCare’s board of managers.

“Another financial piece of it — and honestly this is so new that I really don’t know — but I worry about some of our practices. I worry that some of them might not actually be able to continue,” she said.

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I worry about some of our practices. I worry that some of them might not actually be able to continue.

Dr. Toby Sadkin of Primary Care Health Partners

Owen Foster, with the Green Mountain Care Board, acknowledges that the end of OneCare will be a loss to some practices. But he says it was not a very efficient system.

“To get the money to primary care providers, we had a very expensive middleman, which was OneCare,” he said. “Money had to go from the hospitals to OneCare dues, out of OneCare, to individual primary care practices. That’s not a great way to pay for health care.”

He says throughout the tenure of the organization, health care payment in Vermont did not fundamentally shift away from the “fee for service” model. That was especially true a few years ago, after a big commercial insurer, BlueCross BlueShield Vermont, stopped working with OneCare.

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OneCare Vermont, headquartered in this Colchester office building, was part of an experiment in Vermont health care payment reform.

The state is currently in negotiations with the federal government to potentially participate in another payment reform program called the AHEAD model.

“This is the only opportunity, really, to bring additional Medicare dollars and federal dollars to support primary care in Vermont,” said Jessa Barnard, the head of the Vermont Medical Society.

It’s would also be a continuation of some kind of value-based payment system that started with OneCare.

“If we’re not doing AHEAD, it really does all go away,” Barnard said.

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Hour-by-hour: When to expect showers & thunderstorms Tuesday in Vermont, New York

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Hour-by-hour: When to expect showers & thunderstorms Tuesday in Vermont, New York


The most widespread storm coverage will occur between 2-8 PM Tuesday, April 14

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Timeline: When to expect showers & thunderstorms Tuesday in Vermont, New York

The most widespread storm coverage will occur between 2-8 PM Tuesday, April 14

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NBC5 meteorologists expect strong to locally severe thunderstorms Tuesday afternoon into the evening for Vermont and northern New York.Watch the video to see when showers, downpours, and storms are most likely near your town.

NBC5 meteorologists expect strong to locally severe thunderstorms Tuesday afternoon into the evening for Vermont and northern New York.

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Watch the video to see when showers, downpours, and storms are most likely near your town.

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weatherWatchLink.setAttribute(‘data-initial-onclick’, weatherWatchLink.getAttribute(‘onclick’) || ”);
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var iconEl = container.querySelector(‘.weather-grid–current-icon’);
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function updateWeatherBackground(iconName) {
try {
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function refreshWeatherIframe(containerId) {
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var tempEl = container.querySelector(‘.weather-grid–current-temp-value’);
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updateWeatherBackground(weatherData.current.icon_name);
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e.preventDefault();
var nextIndex = currentIndex

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Noah Kahan, Vermont consumers and venues voice support for ticket resale limits

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A movement to limit the resale price of concert and event tickets is growing in Vermont.Last Thursday, renowned Vermont singer Noah Kahan submitted a video to a state Senate committee voicing his support of H.512. The bill passed the House last month. “This bill is a critical step in eliminating predatory resale behaviors and offering promoters a great solution for exchanging and reselling tickets in a safe marketplace,” the Strafford native said to lawmakers.The bill would limit the resale of tickets to 110% of the value they were originally purchased at. Other Vermonter’s testified that day and said they found themselves purchasing tickets online, not from the event’s venue or artist. They said the price was way above the original rate. “Now I was not just mad at myself, but I was mad at this person who did it to me,” Marina Cole of Wheelock told lawmakers. In 2024, the National Association of Ticket Brokers told NBC 5 that they were against price caps, which this bill is currently pursuing.”We have really good businesspeople who are doing the right thing,” Executive Director Gary Adler said at the time. The bill, as passed by the House, would charge the Vermont Attorney General’s Office with enforcing the resale cap. The office would have the authority to conduct audits, issue penalties and revoke a reseller’s license. Resale licenses would be a new requirement under the current bill. “I suspect the enforcement won’t be easy,” executive director of the Champlain Valley Exposition Tim Shea said Monday. “But it’s something we’re looking to follow and advocate for the right ticket buyer.”Shea said the Expo has been approached by consumers who have faced high resale prices and even some cases of ticket fraud through online reselling. He believes the legislation would help avoid those issues and keep revenues for Vermont venues and artists within the state. “When tickets are marked up to the level, they are that money’s going out of Vermont. It’s not staying here. It’s not going to the promoter. It’s not going to the concessioners on the ground,” Shea said. The bill is currently being reviewed by the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs.

A movement to limit the resale price of concert and event tickets is growing in Vermont.

Last Thursday, renowned Vermont singer Noah Kahan submitted a video to a state Senate committee voicing his support of H.512. The bill passed the House last month.

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“This bill is a critical step in eliminating predatory resale behaviors and offering promoters a great solution for exchanging and reselling tickets in a safe marketplace,” the Strafford native said to lawmakers.

The bill would limit the resale of tickets to 110% of the value they were originally purchased at. Other Vermonter’s testified that day and said they found themselves purchasing tickets online, not from the event’s venue or artist. They said the price was way above the original rate.

“Now I was not just mad at myself, but I was mad at this person who did it to me,” Marina Cole of Wheelock told lawmakers.

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In 2024, the National Association of Ticket Brokers told NBC 5 that they were against price caps, which this bill is currently pursuing.

“We have really good businesspeople who are doing the right thing,” Executive Director Gary Adler said at the time.

The bill, as passed by the House, would charge the Vermont Attorney General’s Office with enforcing the resale cap.

The office would have the authority to conduct audits, issue penalties and revoke a reseller’s license. Resale licenses would be a new requirement under the current bill.

“I suspect the enforcement won’t be easy,” executive director of the Champlain Valley Exposition Tim Shea said Monday. “But it’s something we’re looking to follow and advocate for the right ticket buyer.”

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Shea said the Expo has been approached by consumers who have faced high resale prices and even some cases of ticket fraud through online reselling. He believes the legislation would help avoid those issues and keep revenues for Vermont venues and artists within the state.

“When tickets are marked up to the level, they are that money’s going out of Vermont. It’s not staying here. It’s not going to the promoter. It’s not going to the concessioners on the ground,” Shea said.

The bill is currently being reviewed by the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs.



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Meet the 95-year-old Vermont herbarium volunteer who had a fern named for her

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Meet the 95-year-old Vermont herbarium volunteer who had a fern named for her


BURLINGTON, Vt. (InvestigateTV) — For 28 years, Hilda White has shown up at the University of Vermont’s Pringle Herbarium to do a job most people have never heard of: mounting plants.

Now 95 years old, White has carefully preserved more than 50,000 plant specimens — pressing and affixing them to archival paper so they can be studied and referenced for generations to come.

“If I mount the plants, the plants will be around for hundreds of years, barring any unforeseen accidents or anything,” White said.

Birthday gift unlike any other

For her 95th birthday, the herbarium gave her a gift unlike any other: a newly discovered fern, found in Colombia in 2023, was officially named for her.

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The plant — a Christmas fern — was discovered by Wes Testo, now the director of the Pringle Herbarium collection, during a research trip to South America.

“I was walking through the forest there, and I saw this just spectacular fern,” Testo said. “I knew immediately it was something I hadn’t seen before.”

After further research confirmed it was a species new to science, Testo and his colleagues decided to name it for White: Polystichum hildae.

“Oh, I was absolutely blown away,” White said when she learned of the honor.

“You can’t imagine, I cried all afternoon.”

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‘Library for plants’

White’s work at the herbarium is kind of a library for plants.

“I can’t draw, but this is my artistic outlet,” she said.

Testo said White’s contributions have been essential to the research conducted in the collection, which now houses 400,000 plant specimens in a single room.

“Hilda mounted a huge amount of the specimens you see here,” Testo said. “Her contributions are absolutely essential to the research we do here.”

The collection’s survival is not something White or Testo take for granted. In 2017, a fire broke out at Torrey Hall, where the collection was housed at the time. Testo was in South America doing research when he received word.

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“All I could see from an email in Colombia — the roof on fire. I thought my whole Ph.D. was going up in flames along with the whole collection here,” Testo said.

White was on her way into work when the fire broke out. Staff and volunteers, including White, worked to restore and remount the damaged plants. The collection has since been relocated to the Jeffords Building.

No plans to stop

White says she has no plans to stop.

“Oh no! I’ll be here as long as I can,” she said.

And when asked what she planned to give Testo for his birthday in return for the honor of having a plant named after her, White kept it simple.

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“He just got good wishes!”

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