The healthcare challenge for people living with HIV/AIDS in Colorado

One of the reasons that the work of the new, statewide Colorado AIDS Project and its regional CAPs is so critical is that access to quality healthcare in Colorado is a tremendous challenge. According to the Department of Regulatory Agencies 2009 Health Insurance Report, 16.2% of Coloradans – which is 790K people – were uninsured in 2008. Another 20.6% of Colorado residents receive their healthcare through government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid or the Veterans Administration.

Meanwhile, 51 of the state’s 64 counties are officially designated “Health Professional Shortage Areas.” The Colorado Health Institute projects that by 2025, Colorado will need an additional 2,200 primary care providers beyond the anticipated supply. On the Western Slope of Colorado, locating a primary care doctor who will accept new patients is nearly impossible.

For people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), access to specialty care – specifically infectious disease experts with experience in treating HIV/AIDS – is one of the most critical factors for being able to live comfortably and productively.  And remember that many PLWHA are members of otherwise underserved communities. While the Denver metro area has many specialty providers who accept Medicaid, there are no such options in the northern region of the state and limited options in the southern and western regions.

These facts create an unfortunate vacuum for PLWHA, a vacuum that the new, statewide Colorado AIDS Project will fill by doing what we’ve been doing for years, just on a grander scale and in a more coordinated fashion. We will provide equal access to high-quality, sensitive primary and specialty care for PLWHA, as best as we possibly can.  And put those who are at risk of the disease in touch with culturally competent, accurate information, so we can curb new infections.

Merger makes news in the Colorado Springs Gazette

Did you see the great article in the Colorado Springs Gazette about the merger?  Check it out.

Merger will mean increased voice, increased ability to respond

Colorado has a history of being proactive in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. CAP, NCAP, S-CAP, and WestCAP have consciously decided to merge as a way of improving services rather than reacting to federal and state mandates and future changes in funding.

The key to successful integration between multiple organizations is the desire to move beyond where they stand now and together move forward to create a truly new organization responding to needs being driven by today’s climate. The degree of success achieved historically has depended on how well the organization is equipped to deal with and capitalize on the powerful and widespread change needed to elevate the organization.

This merger will increase our voice. The hope is that national funders, lawmakers, individuals will hear our voice and respond. Their response will have a large impact on individuals living with, or at risk of, HIV in the state of Colorado. Through increased efficiencies and funding, together the new statewide Colorado AIDS Project will be able to respond more efficiently than at any point in our histories.

CAP will be the largest provider of HIV/AIDS case management, prevention and advocacy services in the state of Colorado. It’s a very exciting time here at CAP and we hope that you join with us in taking part in this historic occasion.

Reflecting on Frisco: staff synergy and coalescence around mission

Frisco, CO, is not a bad place to reflect on, but I’ve been doing so for reasons other than the obvious. I’m a consultant that’s been helping with the merger. Back on July 22, N-CAP, SCAP, WestCAP, and CAP (Denver) did a retreat in Frisco for all of the staffs to meet for the first time. They’d all be coworkers soon, so the idea was to get them in the same room together. We figured they had better meet.

You really never know how these things will go. But it was fabulous. Each staff entertained with “day in the life of our CAP” skits and stories of just how different it is to serve people living with HIV and AIDS depending on what part of the state you’re in. For instance, the staff of WestCAP stunned the room to admiring silence relaying the stories of loading up clients into their cars and driving them hours away to the nearest healthcare providers.

Everyone learned that they’re all in this together. Those who work for a Colorado AIDS Project organization are a unique breed – passionate, immensely caring, energetic, and dedicated. That’s true whether they’re in Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Ft. Collins, Denver, and everywhere in between. They make great colleagues.

In a survey at the end of the retreat, all the staffs gave the event very high ratings. “So they liked a retreat? So what?” one might ask. It matters because it started this conversation about the merger, what it all means, and why it’s the right thing at the right time. The conversation could not have started on a more positive note.

“Same great people”: what that means exactly

In the “About” section of this blog, we say, “Each CAP will continue to have the same name, the same great people, and offer the same great services.” For all of our blog readers, particularly our hardworking and loyal Colorado AIDS Project staff around the state (and everyone who loves and relies on them!), I want to spell that out in slightly more detail.

As we said at the all-staff retreat in Frisco back in July, we do not expect anyone who works for one of the four regional CAPs to lose his or her job because of the merger.  Of course, a key goal of the merger is to discover efficiencies over time in some key administrative systems, such as accounting and bookkeeping. Jeff Basinger described those opportunities for administrative efficiencies in another post recently. And those efficiencies could cause some minor shifting around of administrative functions.

But the vast majority of people who work for any of the four merging CAPs are fully “in service”: they are either directly serving people impacted by HIV/AIDS or doing things that ensure those people are consistently, fairly, sensitively served. Said another way, this merger does not create what merger and acquisition people call “staff redundancies.”  Among the many pieces of great news about this merger is that we fully expect all the great people of the new, statewide Colorado AIDS Project to be here, continuing to serve and run education programs to curb the spread and stigma of the disease.

Coming up, a search for a statewide CEO

Ultimately the new, statewide Colorado AIDS Project will hire a new CEO, a chief executive that oversees the entirety of CAP operations statewide.  The executive directors of each of the four regional CAPs – now Jeff Basinger at NCAP, Richard Blair at S-CAP, Mary Beth Luedtke at WestCAP, and Ruth Pederson at Denver’s CAP – will report to that CEO.  That CEO will report to the new statewide board of directors.

In the meantime, Ruth Pederson of Denver’s CAP is serving as interim CEO. We thank her for her service.

The board has put together the search committee, which will be meeting for the first time later this month.

Unveiling a merger the new way

When the leaders of the four Colorado AIDS Projects that are merging first imagined how we’d share the news with the world, we figured we’d do it the traditional way.  We’d choose an announcement date, and on that date, we’d put out a press release. And maybe we’d host a press conference or something like that. We figured that up until that time, we’d keep the news a secret while we figured out exactly what we wanted to say about the merger.  People would know what we wanted them to know, and hear what we wanted them to hear, all when we wanted them to.

But then it occurred to us, none of us are really that traditional!  And we’re not very good at keeping secrets anyway. Besides, the merger is fantastic news for people affected by HIV and AIDS in Colorado and the effort to curb new infections. Why should we confine that news to just one day?

So, we’re bringing the new, merged “Colorado AIDS Project” to the world a little differently.  We’re making it a conversation with no precise beginning and end.   This blog is a key part of that, where we’ll be giving our staffs, clients, volunteers, donors, healthcare providers, and other members of the CAP family statewide a view into what we’re doing around the merger, and why.  We hope it facilitates lots of enthusiasm and understanding.  We think it will.