Vail Health Dedicates Precourt Healing Center, Colorado’s New State-Of-The-Art Inpatient Behavioral Health Facility
The May 5 opening of Vail Health’s Precourt Healing Center, now the only inpatient behavioral health facility between Denver and Salt Lake City, Utah, is a dream come true for many. Amanda Precourt and her late father, Jay, led the charge to build the facility and “made what was once a dream a reality,” said Will Cook, Vail Health’s CEO.
Amanda Precourt began working with Dr. Marshall Thomas and George Wiegers on a new model of mental health care, “one that combined clinical excellence with whole person care,” she said. “For four years, we studied what was broken and imagined what could be. We wrote a white paper for a new kind of hospital.”
Twelve years after Amanda Precourt left inpatient treatment, the Precourt Healing Center has become that hospital. The Precourt Healing Center is the culmination of a community-led effort, filling in the final piece in the puzzle of a chain of collaborative work to provide wraparound care for patients at every level of the community, from outpatient treatment to immediate crisis.
“If you asked me what I think is one of the most heavily weighted variables in our success equation, it’s the power of collective impact,” Cook said. “It truly does take a valley.”
“What has happened here in six, seven years, I truly don’t believe has ever happened anywhere in this country. This is truly a grassroots initiative where every partner has jumped in and done everything they can to get to where they are today,” said Chris Lindley, the chief population health officer and executive director of behavioral health for Vail Health.
“Today, we have a tremendous outpatient system that is up and running, we have what we believe will be the best psychiatric facility in the country — that’s our standard that we’re working to — we have clinicians in schools, we have a 911 response mechanism for crisis, we have so many amazing nonprofits that are doing incredible prevention and education work, and everybody is working together. It’s all of ours, it’s all of our win.”
