DENVER — For the first time, Denver Health officials on Wednesday presented their spending plan for funding generated through a voter-approved sales tax increase.
In November 2024, Denver voters approved ballot measure 2Q, which increased the city's sales tax by 0.34% in order to fund the state’s largest safety net hospital.
Denver Health CEO Donna Lynne told the Denver City Council's Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee on Wednesday that the anticipated funding is expected to help with the hospital system's uncompensated costs.
"We take care of people regardless of their ability to pay. We get a small amount from the city, that's based on history, but it hasn't met the needs of a growing population in Denver, a growing population at Denver Health and increases in medical costs," Lynne said.
Uncompensated costs are costs that go unpaid by either patients or insurers. According to Lynne, Denver Health's uncompensated costs were roughly $60 million in 2020. It grew to $145 million in 2024.
"It did go up," Lynne said. "It's been going up pretty dramatically since 2020."
Denver Health expects to collect $65 million from the sales tax increase. Lynne said that money will help the hospital system in five specific areas.
"It's not going to build a new building. It's not going to administrators. We can't buy desks," she said. "We said there are five areas that we believe are essential for Denver residents to recognize that we provide care, and it's often not reimbursed properly. So, that's primary care to prevent illness. It's pediatric care to take care of our most vulnerable. It is emergency and trauma care. Think about the EMS ambulances that move around the city, our emergency room that takes care of a lot of trauma cases, and then the remaining two areas were mental health and substance use."
Lynne said the goals for the spending plan are clear: maintain funding in priority program areas, reduce financial gaps from uncompensated care, increase financial flexibility due to the uncertainty of Medicaid dollars and other federal funds, and plan for any contingencies.
"2Q gave us a little bit of a breather," Lynne told Denver7.
However, Denver Health now faces another concern: impacts to Medicaid and federal funding.
"The big concern now, and by magnitude, I mean multiples of where we've been, is what Congress and the president might do around Medicaid funding," Lynne said.
"They have clearly said they are targeting $880 million worth of cuts nationally over the next 10 years," she added."I believe the governor said he sees a billion coming, in possible cuts, coming to Colorado."
Those impacts would be felt by the hospital system, according to its CEO.
"That would hugely impact Denver Health because 49% of our patients are on Medicaid, and that's the primary place that the federal government is trying to take a scalpel or maybe an ax to," Lynne said. "I'm holding my breath and my lungs are about to burst."
Four-month-old Dakota has been in the pediatric center of Denver Health for roughly one month after a car crash.
"He's hanging in there," said Nate Beanda, Dakota's dad. "It's been a journey, as you can imagine, with ups and downs and a lot of uncertainty about a lot of things, but yeah, he's hanging in there."
Dakota was just 3 months old when he and his family were involved in the crash. Since then, his parents have been right by his side through it all.
"Right after we got hit, we had no idea what was going on or what was happening with him, but when we got to the emergency room, we had probably two dozen doctors who were all just jumped right in to help him," said Dakota's mom, Courtney Abbott. "We had a handful of doctors who kept coming out of the room to talk to us about every little step as they were doing things, and make sure we were as well informed as we could be, while we were also just processing the whole event."
It's families like Dakota's who would continue benefiting from the kind of care doctors in the Denver Health emergency room provide.
"From my perspective, my understanding is they saved his life," Beanda said.
For Lynne, Wednesday's presentation was about maintaining transparency for Denver voters while also being candid about the current state of the hospital system.
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