Will Cook: Building the World’s Most Modern Mountain Health Care System
Will Cook, president and CEO of Vail Health, shares:
This January marked my fifth year as president and chief executive officer of Vail Health. As I reflect, I’m truly amazed and inspired by what we have accomplished as an organization and a community during this time.
In these last five years, we have integrated primary and specialty care into Vail Health’s system with the addition of Colorado Mountain Medical. I am most proud, however, of how our community came together to begin to tackle the behavioral health crisis. While it might seem that COVID-19 was the health crisis of our lifetimes, it is behavioral health in my opinion. So many of us have been touched directly and indirectly by this disease and so many have given so generously of their time, talent and resources to help us develop a comprehensive plan to address it.
As part of that plan, Vail Health committed more than $200 million to behavioral health, creating a new behavioral health service line, providing Olivia’s Fund, launching the Behavioral Health Innovation Center, creating the Mountain Strong Employee Assistance Program for local organizations, and opening both an outpatient behavioral health clinic (Wiegers Mental Health Clinic) and a 28-bed in-patient behavioral health hospital (Precourt Healing Center, opening in 2025).
In addition to the Wiegers Mental Health Clinic and the Precourt Healing Center, the Edwards Community Health Campus also provides space for The Community Market, My Future Pathways, Your Hope Center, and Vail Health Behavioral Health providers. We are also expanding behavioral health services to enable us to take care of our colleagues, friends and family from our neighboring communities. Every action moves us closer to our goal of one day spending as much time, effort and energy on behavioral health as we do on our physical health.
A true testament to the generosity of our community, the Vail Health Foundation campaign, It Takes A Valley: Transforming Behavioral Health, has raised $88.4 million of its $100 million goal as of January 2024. This includes $22.1 million raised in collaboration with our community fundraising partners. I look forward to what’s coming next and hope you will join me at the annual State of Vail Health event on Feb. 20, 2024, at 4 p.m. via Zoom to learn more. You can RSVP to series@vailhealth.org.
