Coloradoan: Estes Park’s only hospital joining UCHealth’s System

Estes Park Health has started the process of joining the UCHealth System, with an expected starting date in the spring of 2025, the two organizations announced in a joint news release Wednesday.

More than 80% of voters in the Park Hospital District, which operates Estes Park Health, authorized the district to join a health system in 2023, the news release said.

A letter of intent was signed by the two health systems Oct. 3, with a final agreement expected in the “coming months,” according to the news release, written jointly by spokespeople Wendy Rigby of Estes Park Health and Dan Weaver of UCHealth.

“UCHealth will share more information with employees and the community during this time, easing the transition and answering their questions,” the release said.

UCHealth will invest more than $30 million into the hospital and Estes Park community “in the coming years,” help recruit new staff members and stabilize Estes Park Health’s finances, according to the news release.

Estes Park Health has been financially challenged in recent years to maintain its services, the news release said, citing problems hospitals across the country have had keeping up with “dramatically increasing expenses, rising uncompensated care and minimal increases in
reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.” As a result, the only hospital serving the Estes Valley, including visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park, has had to transfer or reduce its obstetrics, home health and hospice services.

Estes Park Health is a nonprofit, critical access hospital with 320 employees, 23 inpatient beds, and 22 physicians and advanced practice providers, the release said. Its net operating revenue is more than $60 million.

Estes Park Health, established in 1975 as Elizabeth Knutsson Memorial Hospital, has been an affiliate partner of UCHealth for many years, Weaver said, working particularly closely with Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins and Medical Center of the Rockies. That affiliation
provided Estes Park Health with some IT services, management support and its electronic health record systems.

UCHealth will take over full operation of Estes Park Health under this agreement, he wrote in an email to the Coloradoan.

UCHealth operates 14 acute-care hospitals in Colorado and has more than 200 clinics serving patients at locations across the state, as well as southern Wyoming and western Nebraska, Weaver said. It has affiliate partnerships in place with hospitals in Cheyenne, Gillette and
Laramie, Wyoming; and one in Sidney, Nebraska.