Behavioral health hospital construction has begun

Construction is underway at the site of a new behavioral health hospital in Cape Girardeau, which, when it opens late next year, will offer the most extensive inpatient psychiatric services between St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee.

“We’ve started clearing the land and are beginning the construction phase,” said Ron Escarda of Universal Health Services Inc., which is partnering with SoutheastHEALTH to build and operate the $33 million hospital. The facility is near the intersection of South Mount Auburn Road and Highway 74, a short distance north of Southeast’s Cancer Center. Kiefner Brothers Construction is the project’s general contractor.

Escarda was in Cape Girardeau on Tuesday to meet with SoutheastHEALTH administrators and community representatives and to inspect the construction site.

Construction, he said, is progressing on schedule.

“We anticipate the first patient admission to be sometime in December 2020, so we’re just about a year away,” he said.

The site of the Southeast Behavioral Health Hospital is seen from South Silver Springs Road on Tuesday in Cape Girardeau. The site is across from the existing Southeast Cancer Center on South Mount Auburn Road.Jacob Wiegand

When complete, Southeast Behavioral Health Hospital will be a 102-bed, 68,000-square-foot, free-standing inpatient hospital serving psychiatric and behavioral health needs of adults, children and adolescents.

With more than 250 behavioral health facilities in 37 states, Universal Health Services (UHS) is the largest behavioral health provider in the United States. The company also operates several facilities in the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The publicly-traded company is headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

In Missouri, UHS has locations in St. Louis and the Kansas City area, and in the region surrounding Cape Girardeau there are UHS facilities in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, but none within a radius of 100 miles or so.

“The advantage of what UHS brings is they are the leading provider of behavioral health services in the nation, both by size and by scope,” said Shauna Hoffman, SoutheastHEALTH vice president of marketing. “More importantly, they offer a full care continuum, providing behavioral health solutions for individuals.”

The Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee unanimously approved the project in May of last year. At one point, Saint Francis Health System was also interested in being a project partner. Although Saint Francis eventually withdrew from partnership discussions, representatives have said it remains supportive of the project.

Under the partnership agreement, SoutheastHEALTH will participate in the hospital’s governance, but day-to-day operations will be handled by UHS.

And although Southeast Behavioral Health Hospital’s opening is still about a year away, Escarda said it won’t be long before hiring begins.

“Typically, what we’ll do is hire a CEO and a CFO as well as a human resource director and, if we can identify somebody early enough, we’ll also hire a medical director and a director of nursing,” Escarda said. “The core clinical leadership and administrative leadership will be hired and on the ground between a year out, which is where we’re at now, and six months out, so over the next couple of months we’ll have boots on the ground that will start the recruitment process and reaching out to the community about the various jobs and opportunities we’ll have.”

Escarda said he anticipates hiring “the vast majority” of the hospital’s staff locally.

“By and large, 80-90% of our employees will be coming from the local community,” he said. “We’ll be hiring nurses, mental health workers, social workers, dietary folks, maintenance, you name it. Personnel for all of the typical support departments we’ll be hiring out of the local community.”

He estimated it will take about 175 full-time equivalent employees (or between 200 and 220 employees because some will be part time) to staff the hospital.

The hospital will consist of four inpatient units that will be relatively equal in size — a pediatric/adolescent unit, two units for adults and one for geriatric psychiatric patients.

“We’ll also offer dual disorders and substance-abuse treatment at the facility,” Escarda said, noting it will probably take much of 2020 for the hospital to ramp up to full capacity. Average length of stay, he said, will be around a week and a half. “It will vary by population, but across the board, our average inpatient length of stay is running about 10 days. After discharge, patients will transition into some form of outpatient support setting.”

Southeast Behavioral Health Hospital will offer an “integrated, multidisciplinary treatment approach,” Escarda said.

“What that means is, we essentially have a team collaboration that occurs between the physicians, who are, in a sense, the leaders of the treatment team, plus nursing, the mental health staff, social workers, therapists and others,” he said.

The hospital will also offer a variety of ancillary support services and therapies ranging from recreation and occupational therapy to art therapy, pet therapy and yoga.

“Pet therapy is incredibly popular with our patients,” Escarda said. “Patients love that, and they love yoga, which is a great thing, because it teaches them how to be mindful, how to breathe, how to manage stress and anxiety, and how to alter their moods so things don’t cycle and get away from them.”

In addition to inpatient care, Escarda said the hospital will also phase in outpatient services during the first year of operation.

Once fully staffed and operational, the hospital is expected to have an annual total payroll of around $9.5 million, including benefits. The estimated economic impact to businesses and industries in Southeast Missouri, using a Bureau of Analysis multiplier for the Cape Girardeau region, will be $38.9 million annually.

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