Intermountain Health St. Mary’s Regional Hospital President Bryan Johnson sent an email letter to the hospital’s community partners on March 24 to reflect on the first quarter of 2025.

He also used it as an invitation to the Caring For Our Communities meeting on May 13.

Here’s the letter in its entirety:

Dear Community Partners,

I am grateful for your ongoing support and commitment to the mission of St. Mary’s Regional Hospital. Thank you!

The healthcare industry has faced a myriad of challenges in the first quarter of this year. Not all is doom and gloom, yet the financial struggles persist, and several proposed bills in the Colorado Legislature could potentially exacerbate the situation. Nevertheless, we are diligently collaborating with our local representatives to mitigate any adverse effects and navigate these difficulties together.

We are also seeing a shift in the healthcare needs of our community with growing aging population and decreasing birth rates. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to close Bloomin’ Babies Birth Center. Intermountain Health will continue to provide prenatal and midwifery services at three other clinics in the Grand Valley with birthing services ranging from unmedicated to low intervention to high-risk births at St. Mary’s Regional Hospital. In 2024, 1,230 babies were born at St. Mary’s. We are committed to providing high quality maternity care to the region.

The closure of West Springs Hospital, the only inpatient behavioral health hospital in Western Colorado, creates a critical gap in care for our community. St. Mary’s is not an inpatient behavioral health facility. We don’t have the appropriate facility or a space we could modify to meet the regulatory requirements. In alignment with our mission, we will continue to support and stabilize behavioral health patients who come to us in crisis through our emergency department and work to identify other available facilities in the region better positioned to provide appropriate psychiatric inpatient care.

Despite these challenges, we are still committed to investing in our local community and providing quality care. The Intermountain Health AIM Clinic has moved into a bigger space on the St. Mary’s campus, increasing access to this vital service. The integrated addiction medicine clinic plays a crucial role in addressing addiction along with co-occurring mental health conditions within our community in an outpatient setting. This summer, the clinic will also introduce a new adolescent program, funded by opioid settlement grants. This initiative will be the first of its kind on the Western Slope and will benefit underserved members of our community.

Save the date

Finally, I invite you to join us in-person for our annual Caring for our Communities Meeting on May 13 to learn about our most recent community benefit investments, the impact to underserved members of our community, and our implementation strategies kicking off in 2025. We hope you will provide feedback on these activities as we strive to positively impact the health of our communities.

Thank you for your continued partnership.

Bryan Johnson, FACHE

Western Colorado Market President

Intermountain Health, Peaks Region