Vail Health’s Precourt Healing Center wraps up construction as it readies for May opening
Eagle County's first short-term inpatient behavioral health treatment site is hiring nurses, techs

Vail Health/Courtesy photo
Over the two-week holiday period this winter, six Eagle County locals were hospitalized for mental health treatment. While the patients were first placed on psychiatric holds in Vail Health’s emergency room, they were then transported via ambulance to the nearest inpatient behavioral health centers in Denver.
“To think that those six people could be here and not having to leave their families over the holidays during that crisis, those are the things that keep you rolling,” said Kim Goodrich, Vail Health’s Edwards Community Health Campus program improvement director.
As Vail Health Behavioral Health approaches the opening of the Precourt Healing Center, its state-of-the-art inpatient behavioral health facility, construction is coming to a close and hiring is picking up speed.
Why the Precourt Healing Center is needed
Local mental health organizations have been chipping away at the lack of behavioral health services in Eagle County for years. As the services have filled in, one glaring piece has been missing: “A higher level of care in inpatient facilities,” said Dr. Teresa Haynes, a licensed psychologist and director of inpatient behavioral health at the Precourt Healing Center.
When people living in Eagle, Summit and Garfield Counties experience a behavioral health crisis, their best option for inpatient care is often two or more hours away in Denver or Grand Junction, a journey that is both financially and mentally costly.

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“People typically go to the Emergency Department first and then transfer, so a lot of times some of their hold is spent in the Emergency Department with not a lot of treatment happening,” Haynes said. “Also, unfortunately, my experience with that higher level of care is I don’t know that it has always been the clinical care needed to address that high need and high acuity presentation.”
The Precourt Healing Center provides a local option for crisis stabilization that features dedicated clinical service available seven days a week, 24 hours per day. The center, which can host up to 28 patients at once, offers seven to nine hours per day of treatment, including individual and group therapy, yoga therapy, art therapy, music therapy and physical movement.
The Edwards location of the center offers Western Slope patients the opportunity to see family and the ability to create a discharge plan woven into patients’ communities, which “is huge to be able to do in our community versus a community that is two plus hours away,” Haynes said.
The goal is to treat patients at the center for five to seven days, creating a safety and discharge plan that connects them to therapy and other resources in the community.
Construction on the Precourt Healing Center, which broke ground in September 2022, is due to wrap up this month. The center’s target date to treat its first patient is May 5.
The next step is to get the staff hired and trained.

Hiring updates
Haynes and Kileen Ihlenfeldt, Vail Health’s director of behavioral health nursing, are collaborating to hire the center’s team of therapists — called behavioral health providers — as well as behavioral health nurses and behavioral health techs.
“We have a huge recruitment effort going on,” Ihlenfeldt said. “We’re getting a great response, and so currently just working through interviews and setting those up with peer panel interviews to see who is going to be a good fit and a great match for us.”
Fully staffing the Precourt Healing Center requires hiring for approximately 100 positions across many different departments.
The hiring plan is to start slow, opening the adolescent patient unit first and then assessing how staffing needs change. When the center is at its 28-bed capacity, it will need 16 nurses to run, but the goal is not to fill the center to the brim with patients immediately.
“We’re doing a slow ramp up, so starting with lower numbers,” Ihlenfeldt said.
Treatment for adolescents, mostly young people ages 12 to 18, with some flexibility for educational and developmental level, “seems to be the biggest need right now, state-wide, so we know that’s a space that we’ll be able to start pretty quickly and have an impact right away,” Goodrich said.
As Ihlenfeldt and Haynes hire, they are especially excited about those with behavioral health experience, but are willing to train all those who will be a fit.

“We all know that in an inpatient setting, things can happen fast, there can be a lot of action,” Haynes said. “We really want to build a team that has great relationships, that is focused on teamwork, and that anyone is willing to pivot and be flexible and meet a need if it comes up.”
Haynes and Ihlenfeldt are developing a three-week behavioral health training curriculum for new hires to provide them with a basic level of understanding of behavioral health, including related skills and language. Staff will learn crisis management, de-escalation, behavioral health treatment techniques, safety skills and more.
The most successful staff members will be those capable of building relationships with each other and their patients.
“I feel strongly that the strength of our team will directly reflect on the patient care that we’re able to provide,” Haynes said.
Precourt Healing Center staff will come from within the local community and farther away. Vail Health can offer housing to employees who choose to relocate to Eagle County and are in the process of finding a place to live through its Fox Hollow development, which provides 87 units of employee housing.
You can take a video tour of the Precourt Healing Center on YouTube, or apply for a job on the Vail Health hiring portal.