October 22, 2024, will always be an historic day for us. On that day, Clinica Family Health and Mental Health Partners officially completed their merger and are now united together as Clinica Family Health & Wellness!

This milestone marks a powerful step forward for the organizations who have come together in common purpose. Mental Health Partners first opened its doors in 1962 as the Adult Mental Health Center in Boulder, growing out of the national community mental health movement. Recognizing critical gaps in equitable, affordable access to medical care, Clinica Family Health began its services in 1977 as Clinica Campesina in Lafayette.  The People’s Clinic began in Boulder in 1970 with an all-volunteer staff, and eventually expanded and merged with Clinica in 2007. Over this time, we have often partnered and collectively served countless numbers of people with dignity and respect, offering high quality care with similar non-profit missions- ensuring that members of our communities, regardless of income or insurance status, have affordable access to the care and support they need. By joining together, we know we can do even more.

With this merger, Clinica Family Health & Wellness is well positioned to build upon this history and vision for years to come. We recognize the power we can have together – strengthening access to integrated, whole person care for our clients will improve health outcomes and enable us to have even greater impact.  More than anything else, this is about the patients and clients who rely upon our services, and our presence in the community.  The merger will allow us to create more comprehensive care options.  It will create easier, more accessible ways for our patients to receive services and navigate systems of care.

We are stronger together to build a care delivery model reflective of the needs of our community.

This merger comes at a challenging time.  Hundreds of thousands of Coloradoans have lost their Medicaid in the past year.  A great many of them have become uninsured.  This puts huge pressure on safety net providers like us at the very time that the state is experiencing budget constraints and Medicaid rate reductions.  Community health centers and community mental health centers across our state are feeling this pressure.

We are stronger together to weather this storm.

There has been an incredible amount of effort and partnership to get us to this moment.  But we are only at the beginning of our work to form a new organization.  It will take time to integrate our systems, our benefits, our workflows, and our teams.  It will take engagement and participation from everyone to reshape and elevate our shared values, mission, vision, and strategy, and to implement them authentically.  It will take openness and curiosity to learn from each other, appreciate our various programs, talents, and capacities, and create linkages and connections that harness the best of both organizations.  Meeting this work with optimism, hope and creativity will allow us the greatest opportunities for long term success.

We are stronger together to build an inclusive, equitable organization and culture that supports and grows our people.

Together, we are stronger.

Onward!
Simon Smith, CEO
Clinica Family Health & Wellness

Transforming health
and wellbeing through
holistic care

We recognize that the healthcare environment is rapidly changing and access to care in a fragmented system is a significant challenge. We often wish we could remove barriers in the health care system and bring together more resources to meet the unique needs of our patients and clients. For the past two years, MHP and Clinica have been thoughtfully discussing how we could better work together to address these realities. It became abundantly clear that merging—leveraging over 100 years of combined experience and expertise in physical and behavioral health—was the strongest way to effect meaningful change.    

By merging a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) and a Community Mental Health Center (CMHC), Clinica Family Health & Wellness will be better positioned to provide the most comprehensive care possible for the populations we serve. When someone is seeking health and healing, they don’t want to navigate a difficult landscape of referrals, hunt for new providers, and explain their medical history over and over from the beginning. They want seamlessly coordinated care from providers they have built lifelong relationships with and better access to specialists when they need them . By creating a more integrated, collaborative, and team-based environment among your healthcare providers, we can better meet your health goals. In our history of doing this work together, MHP and Clinica have already seen measurable, positive results reported directly by our patients and clients.

Clinica and MHP have built a strong partnership going back over three decades. Our two organizations share similar values, missions, and visions of access to high-quality, affordable health care for all income levels and regardless of insurance status. We care for our communities with cultural humility, and joining together enables us to advocate more effectively for health equity.

Simon Smith, the current President & CEO of Clinica Family Health, will be the President & CEO of Clinica Family Health & Wellness. The current co-CEOs of Mental Health Partners, Jen Leosz and Dixie Casford, have been appointed to new roles: Chief Integrated Health Officer and Chief Administrative Officer, respectively. As a combined entity, we aim to positively impact policies, systems, and funding structures in ways we could not do individually.

This merger aims to magnify the collective talents and skills of both teams in exciting and innovative ways. MHP and Clinica complement each other in many ways. By uniting, over time we will be able to expand our areas of expertise, offer more professional development and career advancement opportunities, enhance the ways we can support and meet the needs of our staff, and be even more attractive in recruiting and retaining staff—which is especially powerful as the healthcare industry continues to navigate a workforce shortage.