{"id":2446325,"date":"2019-07-14T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=309441"},"modified":"2019-07-14T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T03:15:00","slug":"mind-springs-mental-health-services-in-pitkin-county-remain-unchanged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/mind-springs-mental-health-services-in-pitkin-county-remain-unchanged\/","title":{"rendered":"Mind Springs mental health services in Pitkin County remain unchanged"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Mind Springs Health lost its contract to provide emergency crisis services with the state of Colorado.<\/strong>
Bryce Martin | Sky-Hi News<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Pitkin County officials worked hard over the past two years to build a mental health care system that provides affordable, accessible care to all county residents.<\/p>\n

But a recent statewide development involving a mental health care agency that provides a good chunk of those services in Pitkin County sent them scrambling to assure residents that nothing would change locally, Pitkin County Manager Jon Peacock said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve gotten a lot of concerned calls,\u201d he said Friday. \u201c(Reporting about the change) created a perception that services are going away \u2026 (when) it actually doesn\u2019t change much of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitkin County and other local agencies got together in 2016 and re-examined how mental health care was provided to residents. What they found was a disjointed and fragmented system that was full of gaps and in need to revamping.<\/p>\n

The result was a $488,000 contract with Mountain Family Health Centers \u00ad\u2014 which runs a low-income clinic in the midvalley \u2014 and Mind Springs Health to plug those gaps and create a more complete and accessible system in Pitkin County. That contract included money from Aspen Valley Hospital, the city of Aspen and the Aspen School District, though most came from a county property tax called the Health Community Fund.<\/p>\n

And while the system hasn\u2019t been in place long, preliminary results released in February were glowing from all involved. They included improved response times for people in mental health crisis, overall better access to mental health services for residents and more attention paid to public school students\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n

Then in June, the state decided to change its crisis services policies and ended its contract with Mind Springs for those services.<\/p>\n

Coverage of that development, however, gave the wrong impression to Pitkin County residents, Peacock said. In fact, the only change in mental health services in Pitkin County is a new crisis hotline \u2014 1-844-493-8255 \u2014 that will field all such calls from across the state, he said.<\/p>\n

Karen Koenemann, Pitkin County\u2019s public health director, agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a public standpoint (in Pitkin County), not a lot has changed,\u201d she said. \u201cThis was really specific to crisis services and not the other services Mind Springs provides. Everything else is business as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Mind Springs is one of the only providers of mental health services in many areas, so the new state contractor is recontracting with Mind Springs for the same services in some of the affected areas, Peacock said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmidst all the changes to crisis services statewide, we are glad Pitkin County\u2019s effective crisis response system will remain in place, with the only change being a new hotline number,\u201d Lance Nabers, Mind Springs\u2019 program director in Pitkin County, said in a news release.<\/p>\n

jauslander@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mind Springs Health lost its contract to provide emergency crisis services with the state of Colorado.Bryce Martin | Sky-Hi News Pitkin County officials worked hard over the past two years to build a mental health care system that provides affordable, accessible care to all county residents. But a recent statewide development involving a mental health […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 09:36:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}