Campbell County Health Announces Strategic Shift to Address Budget Shortfalls

The mission of Campbell County Health is To serve our community by providing a lifetime of care with dedication, skill, and compassion. To achieve this mission, one of our core values is Business: fiscal responsibility with integrity and transparency. 

Campbell County Health is at a crossroads, one that many rural healthcare facilities across the country are now confronting. Recent financial projections show without decisive action CCH could be insolvent by 2026. 

While the statement above is somber, CCH leadership is addressing this reality head-on. We are already on track to strengthen both the quality of healthcare and the financial viability of CCH for generations to come. 

How did this happen?

We know our community and our staff have questions, and we will provide a detailed overview in the near future of how we got here. In brief, COVID-19 was extraordinarily disruptive to healthcare. While the perception was that COVID-19 was a windfall for healthcare because of government assistance, hospitals actually lost hundreds of millions of dollars. More broadly, our community population is aging, our population is sicker, we have a higher number of people who are uninsured or underinsured, and our outdated technology has hampered our ability to quickly pivot and respond to financial losses. 

The CCH Leadership and the Board of Trustees are, and have been, taking proactive measures to turn the tide and move toward financial stability. Recent examples include our affiliation with UCHealth, our work with Ensemble to address billing, the implementation of Epic as a modern healthcare software system, and the selection of new CEO Matt Shahan. These examples are just the beginning of the process the organization is undertaking to make significant changes to strengthen CCH and continue to provide quality care. 

What happens now?

CCH has tough decisions ahead that will continue to challenge the organization. We know the closure of Close to Home hit our community hard, but it is an example of the belt-tightening we must take to ensure the long-term viability of CCH. We will work with, and reach out to our valued staff, our partners, and the community to continue to re-establish CCH’s fiscal stability. In the coming days, we will provide a more detailed statement of our plan of action and how our staff, our partners, and the community can be involved in the strategic refocus.