The Basin Clinic Board of Directors hold their public monthly meetings on the third Tuesday of every month at Hopkin’s Field, Nucla’s airport. This month’s meeting took place on Feb. 17. Provider Angela Winn, PA-C, and consultant Jason McCormick joined the meeting over Zoom. At the start of the meeting, Winn told the board the clinic’s providers have been working on Clinical Quality Measures. She said they have data through 2025, and added that the clinic did well at implementing screenings for conditions such as depression, diabetes and substance use. Winn said there is room for improvement for screenings of breast cancer and colorectal cancer.
“We did really well, except those two categories,” she said.
She added that the clinic faces a unique challenge in implementing screenings and data mining because so many of the Basin Clinic’s patients are only seen for urgent care.
Executive Director Christina Pierce said this month she and the clinic’s staff have worked on providing patient surveys. Pierce said she has also been providing HIPAA reminders during staff meetings, and said the staff will have their annual HIPAA training this month. She told the board that she has also been setting expectations for staff on how patients are to be treated.
“We all may have biases,” Pierce said, adding that it’s important for staff to be mindful of their own potential biases and to “treat (patients) with grace, and respect and kindness.”
Pierce reported that she has also been following up on patient complaints. She said part of this effort involved meeting with a dissatisfied patient who was ready to transfer care to a different facility. However, she explained that she was able to resolve the patient’s concerns.
The Basin Clinic currently has a dual clinical and administrative role open. Pierce told the board there have been at least 10 applicants for the position; she is hoping to start interviewing applicants soon.
Pierce also detailed a program available to providers at the clinic for Medicaid patients. She explained that providers have the ability to virtually connect with a wide range of specialists, and the program is free for the clinic to use. It’s in place to “try to help those patients who are out here in the middle of nowhere, especially those who can’t afford to travel.”
The Basin Clinic is still seeking donations to fund X-ray technology, and the board is interested in partnering with a different facility for these services. Pierce reached out to Montrose Regional Health (MRH). She said she’s waiting to hear back, but was told MRH is already working with multiple critical care access facilities and may be able to work with the Basin Clinic at a lower cost than it’s facing now.
“This sounds like a really good option. It might even be better than what we had with Community (Hospital in Grand Junction),” Pierce said.
The board reviewed a model service plan, created by McCormick, for the proposed critical access mini-hospital. The model used formulas McCormick developed himself and estimated, based on the area’s population, that the mini-hospital would see 2,500 patients per year. McCormick said the rule of thumb for the amount of patients seen at a facility, one that is run well, is three times that number, amounting to 7,500 patients annually.
McCormick said financially, he expects a break-even in the hospital’s first year, with a cash flow of $2.5 million in the hospital’s second year. He said going from a clinic to a hospital will take between five to seven years, and he explained that his model currently assumes 82% of the cost will be loaned.
Pierce told the board she would like to have the service plan solidified in March, so it can be submitted to county commissioners.
This story is funded by the Telluride Foundation through a grant dedicated to health care reporting for 2026.
