WASHINGTON – Axis Health System received significant financial support in the latest round of federal funding bills passed last month.

“Another round of home-grown Colorado projects are getting make-or-break funding! Together they address our state’s biggest needs, from fixing roads to beefing up rural health care and workforce training,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper in a news release.

Axis Health System received $1.1 million for its Community Healthcare Campus Service Expansion. The funding will allow Axis to finalize expansion of the facilities it moved into earlier this year.

Hayley Leonard-Saunders, director of communications at Axis Health Systems, said the funds are going to be put toward finalizing the purchase of equipment, furniture and fixtures, which will allow it to hire more primary care doctors.

Axis is looking to create 20 new positions through the funding, including three medical providers, an additional pharmacist (one was recently hired), three dental providers, two behavioral health providers, and nine support staff.

Leonard-Saunders said in an interview that the funding will also be applied toward the clinic’s goal of being able to attend to over 2,000 new patients in the coming years, something she said is a “significant need in La Plata County in the upcoming years.”

“We want to ensure we have as much capacity as possible to care for people in our new space,” Leonard-Saunders wrote in an email to The Durango Herald.

Beyond the equipment, some of the funding is planned for the small things to help create a space that is more welcoming than the stereotypical austere doctor’s office, including a family group room with kid chairs and tables as well as a play kitchen intended to support family and child therapy.

“All of those elements make a clinic a really nice place for someone to be,” Leonard-Saunders said. “Because we really do believe that everyone deserves to receive their health care in a nice environment.

“We really want to be able to live up to that expectation and offer a true, full continuum while expanding access,” Leonard-Saunders said.

Southwest Colorado struggles with residential access to health care. A regional snapshot report from the Colorado Rural Health Center found there are 1,204 residents for every one residential physician. For every 431 residents, there is one mental health professional in Southwest Colorado. Axis hopes expansion will help address some of the disparities felt by those in La Plata County.

Hickenlooper secured $27 million in total funding for 40 Colorado projects along the front range in the second raft of funding. In the first raft, $129 million in total funding for 120 Colorado Congressionally Directed Spending projects, for which Hickenlooper specifically secured $88 million for 78 projects.

Eliza DuBose, a senior at American University, is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez. She can be reached at the edubose@durangoherald.com.