After a dispute over the classification of two UCHealth hospitals — including one in Fort Collins — the health care system and state have reached an agreement to reclassify them and avert a $60 million hit to 29 mostly rural Colorado hospitals, according to an Aug. 26 news release.

The once-public UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital and UCHealth Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs have been operated for years by private nonprofit UCHealth. Despite this, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) continued to classify them as “non-state government owned” hospitals instead of as private hospitals under the state's Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise, or CHASE, program.

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