Mountain Family Health Centers announced last month it’s closing two school-based locations at Basalt High School and Basalt Middle School at the end of the semester for financial reasons.
The nonprofit aims to provide affordable, equitable health care at its clinics between Basalt, Rifle, and Avon, serving many uninsured patients.
Mountain Family Health Centers receives state and federal funding when patients are enrolled in Medicaid, and throughout the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, many patients were allowed to keep these benefits, even if they had become ineligible.
However, the federal health crisis expired in May 2023, and Colorado began slowly removing people from Medicaid who no longer qualified for the benefits, including roughly 2,000 patients at Mountain Family Health Centers.
This enforcement led to a $1.5 million budget shortfall, which led to the nonprofit’s decision to close two school-based health centers.
Dustin Moyer, the chief executive officer of Mountain Family Health Centers, hopes they can still serve students in need.
“It is a loss of an access point, so students won't be able to go over lunch or between classes, but I do hope that we're able to continue serving the majority of those patients.”
Both of Basalt’s school-based health centers are within a mile of the nonprofit’s hub site in downtown Basalt, and Moyer said they can consolidate all of Mountain Family's providers and support staff.
However, research from the American Academy of Pediatrics indicates that school-based health centers breakdown demographic and cultural barriers to health care. In addition, students attending schools with health centers more often report having a regular health care provider, and improved school performance.
The school-based health centers in Basalt close at the end of the fall semester; however, students will continue to have access to health providers at Roaring Fork High School and Glenwood Springs High School, and Moyer is confident about maintaining care at those locations.
“I'm optimistic that (in) this upcoming legislative session, there will be some solutions that the legislature passes,” Moyer said. “I think there is a growing acknowledgment that many of the folks who have lost Medicaid should still be on Medicaid.”
