Colorado health system plans to acquire hospital

UCHealth has announced plans to acquire a small hospital in Colorado.

UCHealth is looking to acquire Estes Park Health, which operates a critical access hospital. The organizations hope to come together in 2025.

This week, UCHealth and Estes Park Health say they have signed a letter of intent to come together. The plans call for Estes Park Health to join UCHealth in 2025.

Estes Park Health operates a 23-bed, critical access hospital in Estes Park, Colorado, just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Estes Park asked UCHealth if it could join the Colorado health system.

Vern Carda, CEO of Estes Park Health, said joining UCHealth will help ensure the system’s long-term stability.

“Residents of Estes Valley and Larimer County, and visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park, need high-quality health care close to home,” Carda said in a statement. “Estes Park Health has been honored to serve this area since 1975, and we recognize the hospital’s future is stronger by joining a Colorado-based health system.”

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Estes Park was founded in 1975 as Elizabeth Knutsson Memorial Hospital. Carda said the organization is looking to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year as part of Estes Park Health.

For UCHealth, the planned acquisition comes about a year after the health system acquired another struggling healthcare provider in Colorado. Last year, UCHealth acquired the Parkview Health System and its two hospitals in Pueblo.

UCHealth has partnered with Estes Park Health to provide services in the past. Kevin Unger, president and CEO of UCHealth’s northern Colorado region, said the system is “honored” that Estes Park is looking to join UCHealth.

“The solid foundation they have built as their community’s hospital will be strengthened as we work toward similar missions of benefitting the communities we serve and improving the lives of our patients and employees,” Unger said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming Estes Park Health’s 320 staff members and providers while providing financial stability for the hospital and additional resources for the Estes Valley.”

More than half of Estes Park Health’s patients rely on Medicare or Medicaid, or they are simply uninsured. UCHealth, Colorado’s largest Medicaid provider, has pledged to ensure patients in Estes Park have access to care.

Estes Park Health is operated by the Park Hospital District. In 2023, residents in the district overwhelmingly voted in favor of Estes Park joining a larger health system, with 80% of voters approving the move.

David Batey, chair of the Estes Park Health Board of Directors, said joining UCHealth is “the right direction.”

“UCHealth truly invests in its patients, its team members and the communities it serves,” Batey said in a statement. “UCHealth has stepped up and partnered with us to offer specialty care here in the Estes Valley, and they provided much-needed support during the COVID-19 pandemic and the wildfire in 2020. Health care in Colorado’s mountain communities is important, and joining UCHealth will allow us to ensure the Estes Valley continues to have access to excellent care.”

UCHealth and Estes Park said they will finalize the transaction over the next several months and are aiming to complete the deal by the spring of 2025.

UCHealth operates 14 acute-care hospitals and operates more than 200 clinics serving Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska.

Many small, rural hospitals are struggling financially, and about half of the nation’s rural hospitals are losing money. More than 700 rural hospitals, about one-third nationwide, are facing the possibility of closure, according to a recent report from the Center for Healthcare Quality & Payment Reform.