Members of the Park Hospital Board of Directors learned Tuesday morning that they may not have the money to replace the roof of Estes Park Health this year.
The EP Health Finance Committee met for 30 minutes following an executive session. The committee chair, Brigitte Foust, asked about the planned roof replacement “that we discussed in executive session.”
The Colorado Open Meetings law limits the reasons for an executive session to personnel matters, legal matters, contract negotiations, property transactions, specific matters required to be kept confidential by law, and investigative proceedings.
“The roof is the third priority on a capital project list,” explained CEO Vern Carda. “Projects showing higher priority than roof repairs are fixing some firewall issues,” he told the board. “Second on the list is to continue with the (Estes Park Health) Foundation’s project. The roof will function in a third place,” Carda said.
Earlier this year, the board approved allocating $450,000 to the Foundation’s funding to remodel part of the hospital to establish a new diagnostic imaging center.
Recently announced reductions in Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements are expected to present challenges in meeting budget goals.
“We need to be vigilant,” said Foust, who indicated that while the “affiliation is fine,” cuts in the federal budget bill passed by Congress likely will begin to impact the hospital yet this year.
The discussion about capital projects followed a report on finances for April and May by Pamela Serbin, the new interim finance director.
Coming in nearly $1.45 million under budget during the first five months of 2025, combined with several unknown fiscal details that could impact the anticipated affiliation with UCHealth, was enough to raise questions among the Directors during the meeting.
Considering future possibilities, “If the affiliation did not occur, it just means that the hospital may close in three years instead of four,” said Steve Alper, board treasurer in 2024 and now vice president.
According to Alper, the amount of money likely to be lost without the affiliation would be great, but the cost of staff attrition, which is part of the budget equation, is difficult to calculate.
“The issue already has some staff being concerned with the stability of the organization,” Alper said.
The financials presented show EPH’s net position down 32.4% from what was budgeted. That deficit is higher than the budgeted deficits shown for the same time period during the first five months of both 2024 and 2023.
The facility’s deficit net position trend is not completely unusual, as comparisons to past years also show expenses surpassing income in previous years.
“We’re a bit slower,” Carda said. However, he noted that the early months of the year are “kind of a typical pattern. We feel that things are starting to catch back up.”
“We are optimistic” that the coming months will show a better bottom line, Serbin said. “I do feel like we’re catching back up, and it’s going in the right direction.”
When asked about higher-than-anticipated legal fees, Carda said staff had used calculations provided by Hall Render, the health center’s legal counsel.
“Very simply, we overspent that, Carda explained. “We just underestimated.”
“I think that there was some extra labor with some junior attorneys and or paralegals to get some of the due diligence documents completed,” said Carda.
Alper acknowledged that the due diligence activities took longer than anticipated.
“And, then, there’s some other legal expenses with CORA requests and HR issues that probably contributed to that,” Alper said.
According to Carda, board members should expect to see over-budget legal fees in future reports.
“We’ll be having a fairly sizable push coming up in 30 to 40 days using Hall Render and their help to gather estoppels and other legal arrangements to provide at closing.