By Curt Peterson
Hartland’s popular, successful community nurse program is administered by Aging in Hartland, (AiH), a non-profit group of volunteers dedicated to helping Hartland seniors remain independent and safe in their own homes. But many other towns, including Killington, currently have no community nurse program. The proposed Senate bill S.231 and partner House bill H.358, would make state grants available to support community nurse programs, according to state Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, a co-sponsor of the bill. The grants would be funded from a $450,000 fund administered by the Department of Disability, Aging and Independent Living as a two-year pilot program. Towns would submit applications outlining current programs and needs and future plans, White told the Mountain Times.
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“This investment by the state will be very inexpensive relative to emergency room and EMT cost savings,” White said.
Only the state could provide organization, regional coordination and information-sharing among all the Vermont programs.
AiH Care and Concern Committee chair Vicki Lawrence said the Hartland community nurse program began in 2017 with a town appropriation of $5,175, half the program cost AiH projected. Volunteers raised the other half. The program employed one part-time nurse, who invested 6 hours per week caring for Hartland seniors.
Select Board chair Phil Hobbie, also an AiH board member, said AiH is asking voters to repeat last year’s $28,000 appropriation in FY2025, for two nurses who spend roughly 30 hours each week with patients. Volunteers continue to raise the remaining half of the program’s $56,000 cost.
The AiH program has approximately 65 active patients who are seen regularly.
“We never discharge a patient — we support
them right to the end,” said Williams
Some of the many programs state-wide are funded by municipalities, but others are not. White said the grant program can help provide equity in the system.
The benefits to patients are manifold. Community nurses provide them with consistency and familiarity — it’s always the same nurse who visits and who has intimate knowledge of the client’s needs, has the ability to help with healthcare decisions, makes regular house calls, and, most importantly, is not limited to a system-mandated number of minutes to spend with each patient. There’s also no co-pay — community nurses provide their services without charge to patients.
Hartland community nurse Katie Williams told the Mountain Times companionship is an important ingredient in the nurse-patient relationship. Being a senior in a rural town can be lonely. These things often mean a lot to a vulnerable, possibly low-income aging patient, Williams said.
She said the nurses are all RNs (registered nurses) with at least a B.S. in science of nursing, and work in cooperation with all other health providers, including clinics, hospitals, private practitioners and other visiting nurse programs.
“We are unique in the overall scheme because we are not under doctors’ orders and not limited by Medicare guidelines,” Williams added.
Community nurses do have limits to the care they can provide. They can’t provide direct medical care, change IVs, re-bandage wounds, or physically assist with bathing, for example.
“We collaborate with Biota and the Visiting Nurse programs to get these needs tended to,” she said. “We educate patients and help them design their plan of care and care schedules, identify their goals and priorities, and coordinate available sources and agencies to help them achieve those goals. We never discharge a patient — we support them right to the end.”
Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich, is a co-sponsor of H.358. “We need to explore and experiment with better ways to keep people healthy and safe in their own homes,” she told the Mountain Times. “Community nurse programs are evidence-based interventions with proven success at improving health care and reducing costs.”
