West Springs Hospital announced a $1,000,000 gift from a Roaring Fork Valley family, and an additional $500,000 grant from Basalt-based Alpenglow Foundation. These grants–along with other Roaring Fork and Vail Valley gifts totaling $500,000—combine to create a $2,000,000 incentive grant fund to complete the hospital’s Building Sanctuary | Rebuilding Lives campaign.
Co-chairpersons J. Robert Young, Rod & Beth Slifer and Brian Davidson MD announced the lead gifts saying, “With this $2,000,000 challenge, new donors will both double their gifts and carry us across the finish line of this critical campaign. A successful match will generate the final $4 million we need to complete construction and bring the new facility on-line this year.”
West Springs Hospital offers the only inpatient psychiatric hospital between Denver and Salt Lake City, serving the entire Western Slope population. Its 32 beds operate at capacity, resulting in long wait times for Western Slope referrals from the Continental Divide to Grand Junction. The new hospital will double capacity to 64 beds. Construction is underway with projected completion by end of 2018.
The campaign co-chairs extended special thanks to Pitkin County Commissioner Greg Poschman, noting “Greg’s tireless leadership was instrumental in developing the challenge grant“. Through local service providers, Poschman became aware of a critical shortage of psychiatric beds, and that every day children, adolescents and adults of all ages are forced to wait needlessly in emergency rooms, and sometimes even in jail, before a bed becomes available to them. He publicized the project to address this need on social media and made personal appeals to donors in the Roaring Fork and Vail valleys. “With exactly zero inpatient psychiatric beds in our valley, local hospitals and law enforcement bear the brunt of these emergencies without the resources to handle them” Poschman said. “We have to address this and bring more local resources to combat our exceptionally high suicide rates.”
Alpenglow’s John & Laurel Catto added, “Greg’s post resonated with us and we joined him at West Springs to see the hospital’s expansion plan first-hand. The fact that the Western Slope has less than 20% of the national average for psychiatric beds shocked us. We are convinced that our community will benefit immeasurably from increased inpatient capacity at West Springs.”
For more information on Building Sanctuary | Rebuilding Lives, the campaign for Mind Springs Health and West Springs Hospital, and to see plans for the new hospital, please visit www.BuildingSanctuary.org.
About Mind Springs Health & West Springs Hospital
Mind Springs Health is the Western Slope’s largest provider of counseling and therapy for mental wellness and also assists individuals and families dealing with and recovering from addiction. Covering a 23,000-square mile area in Eagle, Garfield, Grand, Jackson, Mesa, Moffat, Pitkin, Rio Blanco, Routt and Summit counties, Mind Springs Health offers 24/7/365 crisis response services, 13 offices for outpatient treatment, and 32-bed West Springs Hospital, the only psychiatric hospital between Denver and Salt Lake City. For more information, visit www.MindSpringsHealth.org or www.WestSpringsHospital.org.
Contact:
Roger Sheffield
RSheffield@MindSpringsHealth.org
970.384.3035
