After months of legal negotiations and one day before a “show cause” hearing was scheduled in Larimer County District Court, Estes Park Health revised its concession in a Colorado Open Records Act lawsuit filed by the Estes Valley Voice in March.
On Wednesday, attorneys for EPH filed a motion to withdraw their opposition to Estes Valley Voice’s position, stipulate to entry of judgment, and vacate the hearing date. The same day, EPH rescinded their concession, asserting they had not improperly withheld the document in question.
Because EPH had conceded the matter earlier, the court date, which had been set for May 22, 2025 at 1:30 p.m., was vacated.
Friday, the court set a 15-minute status conference for June 6 with attorneys for both EPH and the EVV to review the matter. Following that meeting, the judge could re-set a hearing or issue a ruling without a hearing.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with whether we think UCHealth will be a good partner with Estes Park residents who are looking for excellent health care. All along, the Estes Valley Voice has been supportive that an acquisition of Estes Park Health was in the best interest of the community, but we believe that the public’s business must be done openly and transparently,” said Suzy Blackhurst, senior editor with the Estes Valley Voice and the lead reporter on the hospital affiliation story.
The suit stems from EPH’s refusal to release their letter of intent to enter an affiliation agreement with UCHealth signed on Oct. 3, 2024, by Estes Park Health CEO Vern Carda. The Voice attempted three times over the past seven months to obtain the letter through CORA Requests.
Each effort was rebuffed by EPH on the grounds that the LOI was “confidential and privileged,” and contained “commercially sensitive information” that was being used as part of a “non-public negotiation process intended to arrive at the definitive agreements that would govern the eventual affiliation.
Additionally, Estes Park Health claimed the LOI was not subject to “public disclosure pursuant to C.R.S. 24-72-204(3)(a)(IV) and the parties are barred from disclosing it.”
“In the interest of public accountability and transparency, the Estes Valley Voice asked the Estes Park Hospital board not once but three times to release the LOI so the people of the Park Hospital District could see what was being negotiated in their name and with their property,” said Blackhurst.
“It is our firm belief that when the document was signed it became a public document under the definitions provided by Colorado state law because EPH is a public, not private, body,” she said. “To continue denying the public’s right to know for seven months appeared to be nothing more than a continuation of the board conducting the public’s business in a less than forthright manner,” she added.
After notifying the hospital on March 5 of the intent to ask the District Court of Larimer County to require that the document be released to the public if the hospital did not comply by March 19, the Estes Valley Voice filed a complaint and application for order to show cause.
A court date was set for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 22.
In an unexpected move on May 6 – election day for new board members of the Park Hospital District Board – Estes Park Health released the letter of intent and then claimed that, because the letter had been released, the issue was moot.
Because the Park Hospital District, which operates as Estes Park Health, is a government entity rather than a private business, the Voice argues that the LOI was a public record and should have been released in October when it was signed. The Voice asserts that by withholding the document, Estes Park Health violated the state’s open records law.
On Oct. 23, 2025, EPH ratified the LOI at a public board meeting and provided members of the public a Summary which disclosed provisions of the actual public record at issue.
CORA states that it is the public policy that “all public records shall be open for inspection by any person at reasonable times,” unless specifically excepted by statute, thereby establishing a general presumption in favor of public access to records for use in the exercise of functions required or authorized by law or administrative rule or involving the receipt or expenditure of public funds.
The public’s right to inspect public records applies to all portions of those records, and records custodians are required to produce all portions of public records not subject to any exemption within the CORA.
CORA states that a work product “does not include . . . materials that would otherwise constitute work product if such materials are . . . distributed to the members of a public body for their use or consideration in a public meeting or cited and identified in the text of the final version of a document that expresses a decision by an elected official.”
“The hospital is a public institution. It’s business should be done publicly and not behind closed doors. Estes Park Health’s board has held over 250 private executive session meetings in the past two years, which is outrageous,” said Patti Brown, editor and publisher of the Estes Valley Voice.
History of Park Hospital District
The Park Hospital District is a special district that was founded in 1968 to build a community hospital. In 1975, the organization opened the Elizabeth Knutsson Memorial Hospital, a 16-bed facility. Over the years, as the building and services expanded, the facility’s name was changed, first to Estes Park Medical Center and then to Estes Park Health in 2018.
In Colorado, a special hospital or health service district is a local government, also called a political subdivision, with the authority to collect property taxes.
Over the past 50 years, the medical services industry has transformed due to advances in healthcare technology, increasing costs of providing medical care, shorter inpatient stays, expanded outpatient services, and the complexities of insurance reimbursement, which often fail to cover the costs of delivering these services.
Due to the healthcare landscape, many small rural hospitals like EPH, classified as critical care access hospitals, have found it challenging to balance their budgets and keep their doors open. In 2022, facing an estimated $8 million operating deficit and concerned about its long-term stability, EPH began publicly discussing the need to pursue a merger or acquisition with a larger healthcare institution.
Over the past five years, Estes Park Health has eliminated its nursing home, birthing center, inpatient pediatrics, in-home health care, and in-home hospice services to reduce operating costs. Recognizing the risk of losing its hospital entirely, Park Hospital District voters passed a ballot initiative on May 2, 2023, authorizing the hospital board to begin the process of finding a nonprofit institution to take on EPH.
Details of the lawsuit
After the announcement on Oct. 16, 2024, that EPH had signed a letter of intent to affiliate with UCHealth, the community was provided with a bullet point summary of the LOI, which had been signed two weeks earlier on Oct. 3. However, details of what was being negotiated were withheld from the public.
On Oct. 18, the Estes Valley Voice submitted the first of three open records requests to obtain a copy of the LOI.
EVV again requested the LOI on Oct. 22 and asked the Park Hospital District to specify the statute supporting their denial of the record release. The Park Hospital District denied the request on Oct. 23 without citing the statute allowing it to claim the document was privileged and confidential.
On Oct. 23, during a regularly scheduled Estes Park Health Board of Directors’ Regular Meeting held in the Town Hall boardroom, David Batey, board chair, said that the details of the LOI would remain confidential and would never be released to the public.
On February 20, 2025, the Estes Valley Voice filed its third request to obtain a copy of the LOI from Estes Park Health. In addition to editors Brown and Blackhurst, this time, the CORA request was co-signed by 30 individuals. On February 25, 2025, Estes Park Health again denied the third CORA request.
Steve Zansberg, an attorney with the law firm of Zansberg Beykin, LLC in Denver and president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, notified Estes Park Health that if the LOI was not provided to the Estes Valley Voice on or before March 19, 2025, the Estes Valley Voice would file suit for an order to show cause pursuant to the state’s Sunshine Laws.
After Estes Park Health refused to provide the LOI, the Estes Valley Voice filed a lawsuit on March 20 to compel Estes Park Health to release the LOI.
After announcing at the April 30 public board meeting that the process of affiliation with UCHealth was not expected to be finalized until late 2024 or early 2025, EPH surprised the community by not only releasing the LOI on May 6—election day for new board officers—but also by announcing that the terms of the affiliation agreement would be shared with the community on May 8 and ratified by the board on May 15.
Mark Sabey, an attorney with Hall Render, the firm representing Estes Park Health, filed a motion with the court to dismiss Estes Valley Voice’s suit, claiming that since the LOI was now public, the matter was moot.
“Estes Park Health violated the state’s open records law. Releasing the record after three CORA requests and seven months after the first request does not negate the fact that the law was violated. The way this was handled did not allow the public the opportunity to directly comment on the details of what is effectively the sale of their hospital to UCHealth,” said Brown.
The terms of the deal with UCHealth include what is effectively a 50-year lease of the property. The Park Hospital District taxpayers must still pay a mill levy, which this year alone will provide more than $4 million for the building’s support.
UCHealth will now make all policy decisions for the hospital. The Park Hospital District Board will only be responsible for setting the tax rate and handing the public’s money over to UCHealth.
Additionally, the terms of the deal allow UCHealth to back out of the deal, but not EPH.
Estes Park Health offered to settle the lawsuit for a portion of the attorney’s fees. The Estes Valley Voice rejected the officer.
In a statement to the Voice, EPH communications specialist Dawn Wilson said: “Our attorneys have advised us to not discuss unresolved legal matters. There has been no admission by Estes Park Health or determination by the courts regarding merits of the CORA request by Estes Valley Voice. Estes Park Health is also doing their best to limit the unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer funds on litigation, preferring to preserve those funds for health care in the community.”
“We did not want the hospital to spin this and say they had settled a ‘nuisance lawsuit.’ Two of the most important roles of the media are to serve as a watchdog of government and to hold them to public account,” said Brown.
“The board violated the state’s open records law. By denying the CORA request for seven months, justice was denied, and for what end?” said Brown.