Just months into its first full year of operations after affiliating with UCHealth, the Park Hospital District board of directors knows it needs to retain more money than planned from its payments to the health care operator just to pay the bills. What it needs to decide is how much more.
That determination is expected in the next few weeks as the board reviews outstanding invoices, particularly legal services bills, in relation to the budget adopted in December.
Of the total $4.65 million in anticipated property taxes and ad valorem revenue, PHD agreed to pay $4.45 million to UCHealth and to limit its total 2026 expenditures to $200,000, including $50,000 for legal fees.
With invoices from Hall Render totaling $163,182 for January and February, Board Treasurer Brigitte Foust has projected a documented shortfall of $176,282. The tally does not include future legal fees or liabilities related to ending a formal arrangement with Ascensus retirement funding.
“There’s no question. We need to amend the budget,” Foust said Thursday. “We are short right now. Legal fees are over budget by 220%.”
“I’m confident we’re going to find a solution for this,” said PHD vice chair Steve Alper, who noted that UCHealth is aware of the budgetary issues. Many of the Hall Render invoices received by the district are being recategorized because they are for work completed during the affiliation process, he added.
“I think we can potentially land in an area where we can actually ask for, and I think justifiably so, enough reimbursement so that we’ll no longer have a negative variance in terms of that budget,” Alper said.
The board agreed to meet in an executive session with David Snow, Hall Render attorney, to discuss negotiations requesting budget revisions with UCHealth. A date for that meeting is pending.
In addition to over-budget legal fees, the district is paying management fees to Ascensus for a retirement plan that was used by employees of Estes Park Health but is no longer applicable. How long PHD will need to pay Ascensus fees will be determined by confirming the date of the official notification of the program ending.
In other action, the board adopted a spending policy and a policy for dealing with Colorado Open Records Act requests.
The adopted spending policy defines routine expenses as those budgeted and unexpected expenses as those not budgeted.
According to the policy, routine expenditures up to $5,000 can be authorized by the board chair or treasurer. Expenditures over $5,000 require approval by both the chair and treasurer and must be documented and reported to the entire board. Up to $2,500 in unbudgeted expenses can be authorized jointly by the chair and treasurer and must be reported to the other board members within 24 hours. All unbudgeted expenses exceeding $2,500 must be approved by the full board.
The new CORA policy will allow the district to charge $41.37 per hour for requests that require more than one hour of work, provides an official form for requesters to use when requesting documents, and applies guidelines for adhering to response timeframes established by statutory law.
No action was taken to review the district’s bylaws or consider contracting for accounting services. Board Chair Cory Workman is awaiting estimated costs to review the section of the bylaws governing the chair’s duties, and Foust anticipates receiving proposals from two accounting firms.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the PHD board will be at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 22 in the town board room at Town Hall. The meeting will be conducted in person and remotely. Remote attendees should register in advance to attend.
Why not ask the Mayor how much was paid for the ransom attack on the hospital’s medical information system. The money that was paid of this major malfeasance would have more than amply covered this slight budget shortfall. Go ahead, ask the Mayor how much was paid. Now, let’s see if the EV Voice let’s this basic, civilized question get proper coverage.
Editors’s note: After checking with Gary Hall for clarification on this matter, the total paid by the Estes Park Health was a $10k deductible. The insurance carrier paid about another $80k. After that, the hospital realized that the ransomer was not providing all the keys to decrypt the locked files, so EPH instead rebuilt any locked records from clean cloud backups. No data at all was exfiltrated (uploaded, stolen), and the hospital caught the hackers in the act and all they did was lock some files and folders. EPH never had to turn any patients away and were able to take care of everyone throughout.