Just over a month after a western Colorado psychiatric hospital warned it might have to close its doors, its leaders say the facility will remain open, at least for now.
Mind Springs Inc., which owns West Springs Hospital, said it signed a new contract with Rocky Mountain Health Plans to help it resolve its financial problems over the next year.
“This new agreement with RMHP removes the immediacy of West Springs Hospital possibly closing,” Mind Springs leaders said of its deal with the insurer.
“Now begins the hard work to ensure long-term sustainability,” Mind Springs said in a news release Wednesday. “We continue to work with our community partners to secure anchor funding to ensure the long-term sustainability of West Springs Hospital.”
Rocky Mountain Health Plans said in a written statement Friday that its top priority is to ensure the communities it serves on the Western Slope have access to high quality care.
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Read moreRepresentatives from West Springs and the state Medicaid office did not respond to a request for comment before publication. But a lawmaker who organized a community meeting to find ways to help West Springs stay open said on Friday that the convening yielded a number of ideas to help improve the facility’s financial problems.
Hospital leaders are on a long road toward resolving the West Springs’ financial troubles. But they see possibility in increasing revenue through some of the ideas that formed during the community meeting including by caring for some of the sickest, most underserved populations in the state such as people who need treatment before they can begin to understand their court proceedings and young people who are too ill to be cared for at home, said Rick Taggart, a Republican state representative from Grand Junction.
“Could West Springs be a provider of those services as well?” Taggart asked. “Those are just two examples, and there could be several more from the West Springs leaders, who are now creating a sustainable plan for the future health of the organization.”
West Springs Hospital, the only psychiatric facility between Denver and Salt Lake City, provides mental health and addiction services to people across 23,000 square miles in western Colorado.
The facility has faced problems for years, and has tried to resolve many issues, John M. Sheehan, president and CEO of Mind Springs Health, said in mid-April, when West Springs announced that persistent financial problems might cause the hospital to close.
West Springs Hospital leaders said persistent financial problems, challenges hiring staff, intense scrutiny from regulatory agencies and trouble getting paid by insurers could have caused the Grand Junction facility to close within 30 days.
The closure of the hospital would have meant the loss of its emergency psychiatric department, a resource for law enforcement officers who bring people in crisis there to help keep them out of jails and prisons. Just over 200 workers would have lost their jobs.
The closure of West Springs would have caused harm to people in the hospital and many others across Mesa County, Taggart said.
“The negative impact its closure would have on so many organizations in health care is staggering.”
Caring for more people to stabilize West Springs Hospital
On May 15, Taggart organized a community forum at Colorado Mesa University to help find ways to keep West Springs Hospital open.
About 80 people attended, including West Springs Hospital staff, Mesa County leaders, law enforcement and local health care professionals.
Mind Springs leaders are creating a sustainable plan that includes new revenue sources that could keep the hospital open. Some were identified at the community meeting, Taggart said by phone on Friday.
“I’m looking forward to seeing that plan and its impact on revenues and cost,” he said. “We have to get the facility to a place where it’s as close to breaking even as possible.”
For years, Colorado has had a long list of people who are “deemed incompetent” or are too sick to stand trial. While they wait for a bed to open at a state psychiatric hospital, many languish in jail.
In 2011, Disability Law Colorado sued the state alleging that delayed admissions to the state psychiatric hospital in Pueblo violated the constitutional rights of people who were incarcerated with disabilities.
The Colorado Department of Human Services, the state agency that conducts competency evaluations ordered by criminal courts, settled the federal lawsuit in 2020, and was required to pay over $10 million per year until 2027.
To help reduce the backlog, West Springs leaders are considering caring for some of those people charged with low-level crimes who are too sick to stand trial. The idea, which came from the community meeting in May, includes possibly tapping West Springs to care for people who are too sick to ever be restored to competency, Taggart said.
“It could create revenue for the facility and help treat some of those individuals so they can get back to productive life,” he said.
This year, the state legislature passed a bill that sets aside $13 million to create a stronger system of care for people younger than 21, who have complex behavioral health issues, and can’t be cared for at home and must receive services at residential facilities.
“That’s another area that they’re looking at,” Taggart said.