Southwest Health System's CEO is leaving for a Durango hospital
KSJD reported that Joe Theine, chief executive of the Cortez system since July 2023, starts as president of CommonSpirit Mercy Hospital on December 7. No successor has been named.
The chief executive of Cortez’s hospital system is leaving for Durango. KSJD reported Thursday, attributing the news to the Durango Herald, that Joe Theine will begin as president of CommonSpirit Mercy Hospital on December 7.
Theine has led Southwest Health System, which runs the 20-bed Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez, since July 2023. KSJD’s report gave no reason for the move beyond the new job, named no successor, and cited no announcement from Southwest Health System itself.
He arrived, the station noted, just after the system announced and then rescinded a closure of the birthing center at Southwest Memorial — a decision that had drawn sustained public objection. The system finished 2024 and 2025 with positive income after three years of losses, and in June Becker’s Hospital Review named Southwest Memorial one of its top 100 critical-access hospitals and one of its top 100 great community hospitals.
Theine has also been the public voice of the system’s warnings about what federal health care cuts will do to it. In September he said Southwest Health System expects H.R. 1, the 2025 federal budget law, to cut its annual revenue by $9.6 million by 2033, against $1.1 million it expects from Colorado’s Rural Health Transformation Program — figures set out in our report on that press conference. In June he told Montezuma County commissioners that about 85% of Colorado’s rural hospitals were not financially sustainable at the end of 2024.
KSJD’s newscasts are at ksjd.org.