Health system collaborates with community partners as it plans to open Precourt Healing Center this spring
Vail Health continued to push through financial challenges in 2024 while doing cutting-edge scientific work, providing exceptional patient care and building unique construction projects focused on supporting Eagle County and surrounding communities.
"I think of our pillars of affordability, accessibility, population health and sustainability as four legs to a table that are there to serve our community," said Will Cook, Vail Health's CEO, during Tuesday's State of Vail Health Zoom presentation.
Last year Vail Health received an employee engagement index of 89, with 90% participation rate, putting it in the top quartile in the country.
"I can't emphasize enough how great our providers and our staff are, and how hard we've worked to not only take care of our patients and their family members but of one another," Cook said.
Last year, construction was completed on Vail Health's public-private partnership on housing for employees, Fox Hollow, built by Breck Grand Vacations. Fox Hollow provides 90 housing units in Edwards.
"While housing still is a problem we're all working collectively to try and solve for, this is an example of a unique partnership that we think is moving things in the right direction," Cook said.
At the end of 2024, construction on the Precourt Healing Center was completed. The 28-bed inpatient behavioral health treatment center allows Eagle County residents and those in neighboring counties to receive treatment without going far from their communities. Vail Health Behavioral Health's inpatient treatment center is on track to see its first patients in May.
In 2024, Vail Health received a plethora of awards across all of its departments, from scientific innovation to patient care.
"While we appreciate the accolades, it really comes down to how much we value taking care of people," Cook said.
Like last year, 70% of Colorado hospitals "currently have unsustainable operating margins," Cook said. Of Colorado's more than 50 rural hospitals, 85% have unsustainable operating margins. (While Cook said Vail Health is a rural hospital, he did not say the hospital and its network has unstable margins.)
The budget deficits are caused in large part because "expense growth continues to outpace revenue growth," Cook said. "Expenses are 40% higher than they were before Covid, and that's a real challenge."
Vail Health has spent "decades" building up its reserves to allow for spending like acquiring Colorado Mountain Medical and $200 million on behavioral health, Cook said, so the health system is not at risk of closure.
However, as Vail Health wraps up some of its biggest projects to date, its leadership will turn more attention to improving the hospital's financial health.
If Vail Health were to stop taking in funds today, it would be able to provide services for roughly 250 days before running out of cash.
"We'd like to see that number go up a little bit," Cook said. "Not only to ensure that we are safe and can remain independent but also to enable us to continue to invest back into our community."
"I think that we're trending in the right direction," Cook said.
Cook said Vail Health is "an orthopedic surgery-centric health system."
"We're not just a mountain resort place where people come to visit, get hurt and receive care. We're also a medical destination," Cook said.
Doctors and staff in Vail Health's orthopedic branch are hyper-focused on research, innovation and cutting-edge medicine. The Steadman Clinic is the most published orthopedic group in hip arthroscopy, and the Steadman Philippon Research Institute is currently the recipient of eight national research grants. One of the institute's projects is working on radiation-induced fibrosis (scar tissue) in cancer patients.
"Research and innovation is really at the core of what we're doing, and it's happening everywhere," Cook said.
In addition to orthopedics and cancer, Vail Health is also supporting innovation in the behavioral health field. The CHILL"D study is currently studying the impacts of heat and cold (think: sauna and cold plunge) on depression. The OPTIMIZE study, which is set to begin later this spring, will test the potential of psilocybin to treat depression.
"We need to find new ways of treating disease and illness," Cook said.
Behavioral health is "the true medical crisis of the century," Cook said. "Not Covid."
In 2019, local leaders came together and created Eagle Valley Behavioral Health to "transform" behavioral health treatment, Cook said. The nonprofit, operating under Vail Health, has been working to address and build upon behavioral health concerns in Eagle County ever since.
"We've started to move the needle now on how we address the behavioral health crisis that's plagued our valley and our state and really our nation," Cook said.
In 2024, the Wiegers Mental Health Clinic, Vail Health's outpatient center in Edwards, averaged over 4,000 visits per month after opening in 2023.
Construction on the Precourt Healing Center wrapped up in late 2024, and the hiring process for staff and providers began.
When the Precourt Healing Center opens in May, Vail Health will offer a full continuum of behavioral health services locally.
As Vail Health evaluates its future as a rural, nonprofit, independent hospital, it plans to continue to embrace community, state and federal partners.
"Collaboration is essential to addressing big problems and pursuing opportunities," Cook said.
In March, Vail Health is taking on crisis response and working with the school district on school-based clinicians, work formerly housed under Your Hope Center. This change is for "all-around sustainability of these services," said Chris Lindley, the executive director of Eagle Valley Behavioral Health.
Nothing about Your Hope Center's programs is changing, the oversight is just moving to Vail Health, Lindley said.
This is part of Vail Health's efforts to support its nonprofit partners by serving as an "anchor institution," leveraging its resources to support them, Cook said.
At Vail Health's strategic retreat this summer, its leadership will discuss how the health system can better address health span and healthy aging options, as well as the growing number of uninsured individuals who need care, and the challenge of providing specialty services in a rural community.
While Vail Health offers the widest variety of services it deems possible, some people need to go to other hospitals to receive specialty care. "We will first make sure we can offer a high-quality service, and then we will make sure that it's sustainable," Cook said.
Cook pointed to pooling resources with other nearby independent hospitals as one potential solution to keep providing a diverse array of specialty care locally.
On top of this, many rural health care systems are seeing an increase in uninsured patients as Covid-era extensions to Medicaid enrollment wear off and people fail to re-enroll.
For those who still qualify for Medicaid, Vail Health can help them get re-enrolled (and the health system accepts Medicaid, along with most commercial insurances).
But for those who no longer qualify and still need care, Vail Health leadership recently met with Mountain Family Health Centers leadership about how to continue to provide care as the number of uninsured patients increases.
This story was made available via the Colorado News Collaborative. Learn more at