Nearly 500 behavioral health workers in Colorado have been laid off in the past 3 months

Nearly 500 behavioral health workers — nurses, therapists and cleaning staff — lost their jobs so far this year with a psychiatric hospital move and two hospital closures. 

West Springs Hospital in Grand Junction, West Pines in Wheat Ridge and Johnstown Heights Behavioral Health have announced massive layoffs since January, causing behavioral health jobs to disappear as the state has worked for years to build a more robust mental health care system. 

West Springs, which operated on the Western Slope for 20 years and was the only inpatient psychiatric hospital in western Colorado, discharged its final patient Monday after announcing three weeks ago that it was shutting its doors. It closed its psychiatric emergency department the same day. 

While the hospital is no more, the affiliated Mind Springs Health will continue its outpatient mental health services, which include therapy for adults, children and families, as well as substance abuse treatment. 

The Grand Junction hospital notified the Colorado Department of Labor on Feb. 24 that it was laying off all 187 employees. Hospital officials said they failed to provide 60 days’ notice of the closure because they had been “actively seeking capital or business” that would have allowed the hospital to stay open or at least postpone closure.  

But the financial rescue did not come through, they said.

“Unfortunately, West Springs Hospital was unable to secure the capital needed to avoid closure, and this notice is being provided as soon as practicable after this conclusion was reached,” said the letter, sent as a requirement of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The 48-bed hospital was operating at a loss, with only about 30 beds filled on average over the past six years, and had come under intense scrutiny in recent years over patient care. The hospital opened in 2005, and in 2016 built a new $34 million facility funded partly from donations and grants, including from the Colorado Health Foundation.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the upcoming closure of West Springs Hospital,” hospital officials said in a news release announcing the closure. “This decision was not made lightly, and we understand the profound impact it will have on our patients, staff, and community.”

Vincent Atchity, president of Mental Health Colorado, called the closure a “disaster for the health needs of the people of the Western Slope.”

“Mind Springs has been a disaster for years,” he said. “It’s an underserved population and their access to care issues are going to increase.” 

In northern Colorado, two behavioral health hospitals are shutting down. 

Johnstown Heights is laying off all 158 employees, its leaders said in a letter to the labor department. That includes dozens of nurses and about 60 behavioral health workers and therapists.

In a letter to the community of Larimer County, hospital officials said it took “pride in the lives we have touched.” 

“Mental health is a personal journey, and we are honored to have walked alongside so many,” the letter said. “As we close our doors, we remain hopeful that the compassion and commitment we have fostered will continue, and we encourage individuals to seek other available resources in their journey.”

The 92-bed Johnstown hospital had come under regulatory scrutiny in past years and had shut down and reopened under a new name in 2021.

And in Jefferson County, the 96-bed West Pines Behavioral Health in Wheat Ridge is laying off 132 workers, though some are likely to be rehired at a new location. Operations at the hospital are set to end March 31 as it moves to a new facility in nearby Westminster. 

The hospital, owned by Intermountain Health, is shutting down as Intermountain and Acadia HealthCare open the new 144-bed behavioral health hospital. In its notice to the state labor department about the layoffs, Intermountain officials said employees in Wheat Ridge will have the opportunity to apply for jobs with Acadia.

The new Westminster hospital will help maintain behavioral health jobs in northwest Denver, but the closures of the other two psychiatric hospitals in Grand Junction and Johnstown are “terrible for their patients, their employees and their communities,” said Cara Welch with the Colorado Hospital Association. 

“We know that our state needs more behavioral health resources and support, not less,” she said via email. “It is certain that some patients will feel the immediate impact – either having to travel further for their care or wait longer to access the care they need.”

Until recently, Colorado hadn’t had a hospital closure since the 1980s, Welch said. The recent closures are due to the “financial headwinds” of the pandemic, a decrease in Medicaid enrollment and “increasingly burdensome state and federal regulations,” she said. 

“It all added up to be too much for these two facilities to withstand,” Welch said.

The hospital layoffs come after rounds of layoffs in 2024 at Colorado’s community mental health centers. The job cuts included positions at WellPower, which provides mental health care in Denver regardless of whether patients have insurance, and Jefferson Center, which serves Jefferson, Clear Creek and Gilpin counties. 

Others included Larimer County’s community mental health center, SummitStone Health Partners in Fort Collins, which abruptly laid off 75 employees last summer, Mind Springs in Grand Junction and Centennial Mental Health, which serves 10 counties in the northeastern corner of the state.

The community mental health centers and the hospitals blamed a drop in the number of Coloradans insured by Medicaid. Enrollment in the government health insurance program was cut after rising dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state has been dealing for years with a shortage of mental health care workers, and lawmakers have poured millions of dollars into increasing the number of workers and access to care. 

The Colorado Behavioral Health Administration, which is trying to create a comprehensive tally of mental health jobs statewide, said it is working with communities to add new services, including high-intensity in-patient care and outpatient therapy. Examples that fill community need include a new 28-bed in-patient treatment center in the Vail Valley. 

“The closures of the West Springs, West Pines and Johnstown Hospitals have created significant changes in the behavioral health care workforce in the communities that they served,” said administration spokesperson Allie Eliot. “In light of those changes, BHA wants to assure the community that providing easy access to high-quality behavioral health services remains a top priority.”