A Denver behavioral health treatment center projects to run out of its 2024 funding in September of next year, three months ahead of initial projections. Officials say, the funding shortage is being caused by tens of thousands of Coloradans losing Medicaid coverage after the federal COVID emergency declaration ended in May.
Denver's Behavioral Health Solutions Center (BHSC) treats adults experiencing behavioral health crises, including people who might otherwise end up in the hospital or city jails. The 24-hour center says it will fill out the rest of its 2024 budget by using supplemental funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
The city originally budgeted to add around $4.1 million to its contract with WellPower, a mental health services company, to operate the Behavioral Health Solutions Center through the end of 2024. Now, that money will only last nine months.
WellPower spokesperson Kate Osmundson said the services offered at the Behavioral Health Solutions Center are "at the highest level of acuity."
"This means that the BHSC is critical for meeting community needs and is also particularly resource intensive to operate," she said. "With the end of the Public Health Emergency and subsequent redetermination of Medicaid eligibility, many people are losing the coverage they had during the pandemic. This is resulting in reductions in Medicaid reimbursement for a wide range of important services, including those provided at the BHSC, which makes it more challenging to continue operating."
Osmundson said WellPower is not reducing services, despite the reduction in funding. But Tristan Sanders, director of Denver's Community and Behavioral Health Division, said WellPower has operated at a deficit in years past.
"That gap is such that that can't continue," he told Denver City Council on Wednesday.
The original funding shortage is just one of many ways that the end of the federal pandemic health emergency and loss of health care coverage for millions nationwide is affecting local health care providers.
Denver Health, the city's safety-net hospital, is facing tens of millions of dollars in deficits year after year. The hospital gets federal reimbursements from Medicaid patients, but one of Denver Health's biggest costs comes from treating uninsured patients. With the end of the federal pandemic emergency, some patients have lost Medicaid coverage as the hospital's proportion of uninsured patients has increased.
City Council's Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee moved the WellPower contract on Wednesday on to a full Council vote, which will make a final decision on the contract in the next few weeks.
"What a shame," said Council President Jamie Torres. "This is pre-primary care service that is so necessary, and for those folks to lose the benefit of something because at a federal level we're not able to fund it, that's really disappointing."
