The Record Staff
University of Vermont Health Network’s president and CEO, Sunil (Sunny) Eappen resigned Thursday, less than a week after the state health care regulator slammed the network for its high executive compensation and cost of care.
Dr. Stephen Leffler of Hinesburg, president of UVM Medical Center, will serve as the interim president and CEO, the UVM Network board announced. Leffler has been president of the Medical Center since 2020 and before that served as an emergency room physician, chief population health quality officer and chief medical officer at the Medical Center. Leffler received his medical degree from UVM.
Eappen began at the UVM Health Network in November 2022, after working as a hospital administrator for 14 years at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He will stay on until December to assist in the transition.
The UVM Health Network includes three Vermont hospitals and three in upstate New York. The Green Mountain Care Board recently set annual hospital budgets for the coming fiscal year and took issue with the network’s reallocations of finances from its flagship University of Vermont Medical Center to its less profitable New York affiliates.
It also noted that at the end of last year, the network’s 19 top executives made a collective $3 million in bonuses — despite rising costs and budgets shortfalls. At the same time, the network ended kidney transplant surgeries at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington and the inpatient psychiatric unit at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin and closed two affiliated clinics in the Mad River Valley.