The Health District is taking bold steps to become more client-focused, accountable, and grounded in best practices. That means re-imagining how we address the real and changing needs of the people we serve, strengthening our cross-sector partnerships, and increasing efficiency to serve patients more equitably.

Where is the Health District’s focus moving forward? 

We maintain three core priority areas for our in-house services: behavioral health, dental care, and access to care.

Are behavioral health services continuing?

Yes. Behavioral health is one of the first areas we’re focusing on as we assess how best to serve our clients. The level of behavioral health service available is not decreasing. In fact, it will increase over time through our collaborative efforts. Behavioral health is a growing area of need, and finding new ways to serve more people is our responsibility to the community.

Behavioral health clients in our Mental Health Connections program — both adult and youth services — continue to receive the same level of this critical service.

• Our Mental Health Connections program continues to offer brief therapy for kids and adults, psychological testing services for youth, and care coordination services for all ages to find behavioral health services that fit their clinical needs.
• We’ve invested financially in the efficiency and administration of the Connections program to make it more resilient and identify opportunities to grow services in the future.
• We've also hired an experienced nurse practitioner to provide medication management services for patients of all ages. 

Is anything changing with behavioral health programs?

We’re adopting modern administrative systems and processes that are standard for publicly funded behavioral health programs. This ensures we’re now able to submit billing for Medicaid, measure our service accurately, and better understand and improve our effectiveness.

Will the Health District have partners to help provide services?

Yes. We’re re-building and strengthening partnerships and processes. An example is our renewed collaboration with PSD and SummitStone Health Partners to get kids the right level of service at the right time. We’re also building accountability, measurement and reporting expectations to account for tax dollars and health outcomes in our partnerships. As we measure and evaluate data and services, we’re already gaining a better understanding of our patients and clinical outcomes.

Is anything changing in the way services are being administered?

To better serve community needs, we’re making these improvements in administering services:

• Historically, the Integrated Care Program has been housed on site at UCHealth’s Family Medicine Center, staffed by the Health District. But this model is unnecessarily complicated. So we’re changing this relationship to a streamlined funding model, with the services being absorbed under the UCHealth umbrella and ongoing funding being provided by the Health District.
• Services available to Family Medicine Center patients through the Integrated Care Program aren’t changing. Current Health District staff will be offered roles to continue this work as UCHealth employees.

Is the funding partnership model allowed? 

Yes. This funding partnership is authorized under Colorado statute. Unfortunately, there’s been a longstanding false narrative that distributing Health District funds to partner agencies is not allowed. We’re moving past that misinformation, which helps us best steward taxpayer resources and prioritize our clients’ outcomes.

What are the facts behind the confusion about the funding model?  

While the statute (C.R.S. § 32-1-1003) is clear, the confusion is understandable and dates back to 1995-96. That’s when a legal challenge about funding prompted a sequence of judicial and legislative actions that eventually clearly established that health service districts are allowed to contract directly with other service providers.

Fueling the current misunderstanding is an appeals court decision in 1997 that addressed legal questions from 1995, before the relevant law was changed in 1996. Seeing the timeline will clarify:

• 1995 – Colorado law at the time didn’t allow direct contracting for services and the district was sued in Haggerty v. Poudre Health Services District. This lawsuit resulted in a temporary injunction preventing such contracting.
• 1996 – The Colorado Legislature passes HB 96-1275, amending CRS §32-1-1003 to allow direct contracting. This remains current law in 2025.
• 1997 – The Court of Appeals finally reviews the 1995 Haggerty lawsuit and the decisions made under the pre-1996 law that did not allow contracting for services. The court acknowledged that the law had changed but it was not allowed to review the case under the new 1996 law.
• 2025 – CRS §32-1-1003 remains the law today, allowing health districts to:
• “…establish, maintain, or operate, directly or indirectly through lease to or from other parties or other arrangement, public hospitals, convalescent centers, nursing care facilities, intermediate care facilities, emergency facilities, community clinics, or other facilities providing health and personal care services…”
• “To contract with or work cooperatively and in conjunction with a health assurance district or other existing health-care provider or service to provide healthcare services to the residents of such district…”

The law is clear that the Health District is not limited to only providing staff and is allowed to contract with other service providers. With that responsibility comes the obligation to ensure that services are provided though proper contractual oversight.

I’ve heard there’s been a lot of turnover recently. Why?

Several employees have recently resigned or retired, which is not unusual for an organization our size. Organization wide, the recent turnover rate is actually typical, although there has been a cluster of departures from behavioral health positions. Turnover during periods of growth and change is not unique to the Health District. We’re restaffing positions based on the needs of our clients and programs.

Why is the Health District making these changes?

A healthy organization must embrace change and evolve to meet today’s needs. The Health District was created in its current form in 1994, and during the past 30 years, our structure and practices have remained largely unchanged. In recent months, we’ve done long-overdue analyses of our resources and our performance, through a humble and critical lens.

Our new strategic plan is a roadmap to great governance, organizational excellence, health equity and impactful partnerships.