[This article is republished with permission from today’s edition of The Colorado Sun.]
The Colorado Attorney General’s Office earlier this fall signed off on a merger between UCHealth and Estes Park Health, a critical access hospital, expanding the footprint of a system that has grown to be the largest health care provider in the state.
Such mergers of smaller, often rural hospitals into larger, urban-based systems have become common in recent years in Colorado and across the country. UCHealth last year, for instance, absorbed Pueblo’s Parkview Health System, giving it a presence in every major metro area along the Front Range.
But one thing about the merger with Estes Park is unusual: UCHealth, which is a private nonprofit, will be directly paid by taxpayers to operate the hospital.
Estes Park Health is publicly owned and receives tax dollars through the Park Hospital District. As part of the merger, a new nonprofit called UCHealth Estes Park will be created to manage and control all of the hospital’s operations and assets pursuant to a $1 per year lease with the district that runs for 50 years. And that new nonprofit, a subsidiary of the larger UCHealth system, will continue to receive taxpayer funding via the hospital district.
The district’s current mill levy is 7.505, meaning it assesses $75.05 of tax per year on every $10,000 of assessed property value. (A property’s assessed value is different from what it’s worth — assessed value is the actual value multiplied by the property’s assessment rate.)
As the Attorney General’s Office wrote in its opinion approving the merger:
“Under the terms of the transaction, the district will continue to collect that tax from property owners and transfer the tax revenue to the new entity to support the hospital’s operations. Per that agreement, the District may not take any action ‘to terminate or reduce’ the tax revenue during the term of the lease.”
UCHealth, like other hospitals, already receives a lot of taxpayer support indirectly via government grants and payments for treating people on Medicare or Medicaid, among other reasons. But Dan Weaver, UCHealth’s vice president of communications, confirmed that this will be the only UCHealth hospital receiving taxpayer funding directly.
He said there’s a good reason for it. Estes Park Health is struggling financially, he said, and keeping the tax dollars is key to keeping it running without further cutting services. In recent years, the hospital has closed its inpatient and outpatient obstetrics services, has closed its skilled nursing facility and has stopped offering other specialty services, Weaver said.
“With the additional tax revenue from the district, EPH has had negative operating margins for three out of the past four years,” he wrote in an email. “Without the tax revenue, EPH has had a negative operating margin for all four of the past four years.”
Weaver said the tax money will all go to support UCHealth Estes Park — not to the coffers of the broader UCHealth system. The merger agreement also calls for UCHealth to provide at least $20 million to the operations of the Estes Park hospital over the next 10 years, as well as to take over $10 million in debt.
The agreement also calls for the seven-member board of UCHealth Estes Park to include at least five people from the Estes Park community, including two members from the publicly elected Park Hospital District’s board.
Voters in the hospital district voted overwhelmingly in May 2023 to allow the district to seek an affiliation agreement with a larger system.
“UCHealth is proud to honor the community’s continued support of the hospital,” Weaver wrote in his email.
John Ingold is a co-founder of The Colorado Sun and a reporter currently specializing in health care coverage.
This article, which appeared in the Nov. 4, 2025 Colorado Sun, has been republished with permission.