BREAKING: Senate Budget May Give Vidant Medical Center the Boot as Brody’s Teaching Hospital | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal, and written by Kari Travis, Associate Editor.


    The North Carolina Senate is crunching numbers to consider building a new teaching hospital for East Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine, a source close to Senate leadership has told Carolina Journal.

    That means Vidant Medical Center, ECU's teaching hospital, now battling with the UNC Board of Governors over issues of governance, may get the boot.

    Vidant Health in April overhauled its affiliation agreement with UNC, stripping the UNC BOG of all appointment power to VMC's board. The action blindsided UNC. System lawyers later took Vidant to court. The case now is in mediation.

    A Senate budget proposal released earlier this week included a provision to cut $35 million from VMC's Medicaid reimbursements.

    The Senate is still looking at figures, and doesn't have a solid cost estimate, though some have floated expenditures around $500 million dollars, the source said.

    Carolina Journal will update this story as it develops.