![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Jeff-Mengenhausen-MUG-267x400.jpg\")
Jeff Mengenhausen<\/p>\nCommunity, Montrose hospitals commit to pursue partnership that will not compromise their independence<\/p>\n
Tim Harty, The Business Times<\/p>\n
Jeff Mengenhausen<\/p>\n
If two area hospitals see the $19 million to $31 million they stand to save via a cost-saving partnership, their respective CEOs may want to grab a handful of that cash and buy Angelina Salazar a nice dinner.<\/p>\n
It was Salazar in her role as CEO of Western Healthcare Alliance who figured out Community Hospital CEO Chris Thomas and Montrose Regional Health CEO Jeff Mengenhausen were looking for each other. They just didn\u2019t know it, because they\u2019d been looking in their back yards for a solution that actually was just a little farther down the road.<\/p>\n
Both were looking for a hospital to partner with on things like buying supplies and sharing IT services. Thomas thought that partner might be Family Health West in Fruita, but he said talks never gained much traction. Mengenhausen thought that partner might be in Delta or Gunnison. No luck.<\/p>\n
Salazar heard from each CEO about their experiences and knew who they needed to talk to instead.<\/p>\n
As Thomas tells it, \u201cShe basically posed a question: Why don\u2019t you two guys start talking about what you can do together?\u201d<\/p>\n
As Mengenhausen tells it, he was conversing with Salazar when she told him, \u201cYou know, you both are wanting kind of the same thing. Jeff, you should talk to Chris.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mengenhausen said he then texted Thomas something like, \u201cHey, let\u2019s go have breakfast.\u201d So, they did.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Chris-Thomas-194x300.jpeg\")
Chris Thomas<\/p>\n
Mengenhausen said that was in July 2025, \u201cand we started just talking, and it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, you know, I\u2019m struggling with IT, and Chris is like, \u2018Our IT department\u2019s awesome.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, they\u2019re struggling with revenue cycle. Well, my revenue cycle, we got that figured out.\u2019 So it really just started to mesh things organically like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd cultures between Montrose and Community, we\u2019re finding out, are so similar. And we\u2019re both focused on high-quality care, high patient experience and our unwavering commitment of independence and keeping it local, not being part of a system.\u201d<\/p>\n
That led to approximately seven months of talks that brought them to early March and a commitment to pursue a partnership.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing,\u201d Thomas said, \u201cis we are creating a parent company, which is yet to be named. The board of directors this past week of both the Montrose hospital and Community Hospital approved the execution of a letter of intent to form this new partnership. And so it was a unanimous vote of both boards to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas added, \u201cWe have a lot of work to do. This is just the start and marks the beginning of our exploratory process that we hope to close and have a definitive agreement by late this fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agreement would be to form a new parent company controlled by Community Hospital and Montrose Regional Health. Each hospital would have three board members on the parent company board, and Thomas and Mengenhausen would be co-CEOs.<\/p>\n
Thomas said their hope is: \u201cThe parent company would then allow us to look at different opportunities like: Can we do group purchasing together? Can we lower our supply costs? Can we improve our revenue cycles to improve our ability to bill and collect and deal with the insurance companies? One of the top priorities is: Can we share IT services?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, Community Hospital has MEDITECH Expanse. Montrose is on an older version of MEDITECH and needs to move to a new version. So, can we do that together to save money on systems, hardwares? Can we have a similar IT system to save money and help us be more efficient and more viable going into the future?\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas thinks the answer is yes, but there are hurdles to clear. If he\u2019s right, he said the word from consultants is: \u201cWe anticipate a savings between 19 and 31 million dollars a year, every year with some of the different partnerships we\u2019re talking about, so we\u2019re talking significant savings.\u201d<\/p>\n
To the declaration of that being real money, Thomas said the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s real money,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, we had a negative margin last year, so going into this year, there\u2019s some challenges. So, yeah, we\u2019re excited about the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, Mengenhausen said, \u201cThe last two years have been a little rough financially, just with the pressures of inflation and labor costs going up, and then some of the games that these payers are playing, which makes it hard to get paid for the services that you render.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so we\u2019re facing the same pressures on, you know, supply costs going up with just simple things, needles and joints or equipment. And if we can come together and be bigger and have better purchasing power, we can actually drive down the cost. And that\u2019s how these big systems are doing it, and we can accomplish that through a partnership versus a full-on merger\/acquisition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas addressed that merger\/acquisition sentiment in no uncertain terms, as Community Hospital and Montrose Regional Health remain steadfast in their independence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a merger. This is not an acquisition. It\u2019s not a takeover,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth boards, both hospitals would remain independent. Our board of directors would remain the same with the same bylaws, the same governance, but we would be just looking at those, what I would say, back-office support services that we can do together to make us both more efficient, so that we can deal with, really, the changing environment in healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s getting more difficult. You\u2019ve got the state of Colorado budgets that are going to be a challenge this year, the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill, so we\u2019re doing this to strengthen our independent hospitals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mengenhausen added, \u201cIt\u2019s actually going to help both hospital systems flourish and actually add jobs and add service lines. And it moves us from kind of surviving into flourishing. \u2026 It\u2019s going to be economic drivers for both communities and add more jobs for both organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, there are hurdles to clear for the partnership to become official, and Thomas said, \u201cYeah, it\u2019s going to be an interesting summer, working through this, but I think it\u2019s going to be an exciting venture for us, and I\u2019m very, very optimistic that we will get this done. And we will both be better organizations because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Community, Montrose hospitals commit to pursue partnership that will not compromise their independence Tim Harty, The Business Times…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-513978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}