Rural Healthcare

As some local leaders warn about a looming threat to Cortez’s Southwest Memorial Hospital, the two candidates for Montezuma County commissioner have differing views on the bill causing the threat.

Health care in southwest Colorado is in danger because of the coming impacts of H.R. 1. That was the message given by State Rep. Katie Stewart, Southwest Health System CEO Joe Theine, and others during a virtual press conference Tuesday morning.

A Cortez nonprofit is reshaping disability services by centering lived experience, employment and community inclusion for people with disabilities in Southwest Colorado.

Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez has been honored nationally, even as it faces financial struggles that are being shared by many hospitals across the state and nation.

As Colorado prepares for summer tourism, visitors planning trips to rural communities might assume that if they have a medical emergency, they will receive the same level of emergency care they would at home. However, that's not always the case. Rural communities may lack a hospital or even a fully staffed emergency response team. For example, the rural Hinsdale County Emergency Medical Services recently lost its only paramedic. That's left the county's EMS system in a pinch ahead of its peak tourism season.

Colorado’s Attorney General — and 2026 gubernatorial candidate — talks rural health care, immigration, gun laws, political violence, water rights, and the future of public radio.

The founder and president of Wyoming's only procedural abortion clinic, Julie Burkhart, spoke with Aspen Public Radio about why she's focused on increasing access to abortion in underserved places.

Bob Downs, a physician assistant from Lake City, Colorado, returned last month from his fifth medical mission to Ukraine. Downs has been volunteering in the war-torn country through the organization Global Care Force.

Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic lawmakers want to cap state insurance payments to hospitals, but providers say they're already operating in the red.