UConn Health faces $54.3 million cost increase for 2027. What it is and mitigation plans

Hartford Courant – Wednesday, June 10, 2026
By Livi Stanford

UConn Health will face a budget shortfall of $54.3 million in fiscal year 2027 due to State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition wage increases, according to UConn Health officials.

In the spring, Gov. Ned Lamont reached an agreement with SEBAC that included wage increases.

Dr. Andy Agwunobi, CEO of UConn Health, said in a statement that the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition negotiated “wage increases for fiscal year 26 and 27 amounting to approximately $55.7 million.

“The state budget did not include additional funding to support these costs at UConn Health,” Agwunobi said in a statement. “We are in the process of creating a plan to address the shortfall and balance the budget.”

UConn Health Board of Directors approved its $2.2 billion budget, which includes a budget deficit of $54.3 million, earlier this week.

“We are very confident in the ability to balance this with a mitigation plan,” said Jeffrey Geoghegan, chief financial officer of UConn Health.

In a presentation before the UConn Health Board of Directors, fiscal year 2027 mitigation plan examples include a workforce review including pausing non-critical, non-revenue generating hires; review of overtime and temporary staff for non-revenue generating areas; pausing non-essential travel, functions, events and catering; review of purchase service contracts and decreases in capital projects and fund balance.

In fiscal year 2026, Geoghegan said that UConn Health also faced a deficit but was able to address it.

“We did achieve our budget this year and balanced the budget despite the $60 million cut,” he said.

He said the budget was balanced through a budget stabilization fund and a $46.7 million mitigation plan.

UConn Health Board member Andy F. Bessette asked Geoghegan what was included in the $46.7 million plan to make up the shortfall.

“The big categories are clinical revenues,” Agwunobi said, adding that the hospital was a huge part of it.

“A big piece of it, a big category, was delayed spending on capital,” he said. “I would say about over 50% are one time items which includes not spending capital that we can avoid spending. It included a slow down in hiring. The rest of it is clinically generated revenues and some cost savings on the clinical side.”

Addressing the salary increases, Geoghegan said UConn Health is budgeting a full year of salary increases for fiscal years ’26 and ’27.

“So everybody’s base salary is going to go up by 4.5% on average each year,” Geoghegan said.

Asked in the meeting if this is comparable to other hospital salary increases, Geoghegan said other hospitals were seeing anywhere from 2.5 to 3%.

“So it is a little greater,” he said. “But I would say though, there’s really two aspects. Number one, just take nursing for example. We are going to pay market regardless of what’s there because it’s hard to recruit and keep people in there. So the 4.5% on nursing is probably not anything that is out of market for anybody else because we’re constantly going back and forth for those.”

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