Baystate Health announces Kindred Behavioral Health as partner in 120-bed, $43 million behavioral health hospital

SPRINGFIELD -- Baystate Health has selected Kindred Behavioral Health as its partner in a long-sought standalone behavioral health hospital project that was put on pause last year.

The plan is to build a $43-million, 120-bed behavioral health hospital from the ground up, opening two years from the start of construction. The new hospital would employ 220 people, Baystate president and CEO Dr. Mark A. Keroack said.

“It’s upsetting that we don’t have more to offer for people with these problems. I think mental health has always been the poor stepchild in a traditional health environment,” he said. “The rate of compensation is low. People pay a financial penalty to get in top this area.”

Baystate’s capital contribution to that $43 million is $5 million, Keroack said.

The new hospital will have a pediatric unit to provide care for children and adolescents. Western Massachusetts has no pediatric inpatient behavioral health hospital beds.

Kindred Behavioral Health is a year-old division of the larger Kindred Healthcare, which reported revenues of about $3.2 billion for the 12 months ended March 31, 2020. For 2019 we reported revenues of $3.2 billion.

The project goes before state regulators starting next month. Completion is expected in the fall of 2022.

Kindred Behavioral Health has the WellBridge Greater Dallas and WellBridge Fort Worth behavioral health hospitals in Texas. Each hospital has 48 licensed beds.

It manages, according to the company, Riverside Medical Center’s 64-bed behavioral health unit in Kankakee, Illinois, and a a 31-bed behavioral health unit within Kindred Hospital Chicago North, also in Illinois.

Kindred is investing to build the facility, but Baystate will operate it. The staff -- doctors, nurse practitioners and physicians assistants -- will be Baystate employees. Baystate is also participating in the design process.

“It’s a really exciting process,” said Dr. Barry Sarvet who chairs Baystate Health’s department of psychiatry. “There are not that many opportunities to be involved in the development (and) the design of a brand-new psychiatric facility with a new model of care.”

Sarvet said the need for psychiatric services will increase in a world continueing to deal with the coronavirus.

“Here at we’ve had a strong commitment to Behavioral Health for many years,” he said. “We believe the mind and body are connected.”

“We really want psychiatry to be connected to the health care system,” he said.

"here at Baystae we've had a strong commitment to Behavioral Health for many years," "We believe the mind and body are connected." Psychiatric illnesses influn

“We really want psychiatry to be connected to the health care system,” he said.

The former Holyoke Geriatric Authority site is Baystate’s primary target for a location. The new partnership has not yet purchased the property from the city, Keroack said. If the site is chosen, the existing Geriatric Authority buildings would be demolished.

Marcos A. Marrero, Holyoke’s director of planning and development, said in an email that the city is currently reviewing a proposal for the site and is doing its due diligence.

Keroack said the Holyoke location is ideal because it’s central to the region and situated with easy access to the Massachusetts Turnpike and Interstate 91.

The Geriatric Authority site at 45 Lower Westfield Road -- once the location of a municipally-owned nursing home that closed in 2014 after struggling for years -- was identified as potential location last year when Baystate first went public with the idea for a new psychiatric facility.

But Baystate put those plans on hold in August 2019 after the company it had identified as a partner, US HealthVest, was the subject of published reports alleging substandard care at the for-profit company’s facilities in other states.

Baystate subsequently severed its partnership with U.S. HealthVest in November and launched a search for a new partner.

The Holyoke City Council had approved the sale of the Geriatric Authority property for $250,000 to B2 Health, a partnership between Baystate Health and U.S. HealthVest, before that partnership was dissolved.

In the nine months since the end of the U.S. Healthvest partnership, much has changed in the landscape of behavioral health care in the region.

The coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns first caused fewer people to come forward seeking treatment for mental health issues, Sarvet said. Now, “there seems to be a rebound of need in the community,” he said.

What’s more, restrictions due to the pandemic mean that some treatment programs are closed or operating at less-than normal capacity -- so psychiatric facilities have no place to discharge patients to, and no way to free up beds, Sarvet said.

Providence Behavioral Health in Holyoke permanently closed all 74 of its inpatient psychiatry beds at the end of June, including a 12-bed pediatric unit. The hospital, owned by Trinity Health Care and part of Mercy Medical Center, cited a lack of psychiatrists, the age of the building and financial concerns.

Separately, Holyoke Medical Center has announced plans to work with its own partner to build its own behavioral health hospital on its campus. That project would replace Holyoke Medical’s existing behavioral health beds, bringing the total number from 20 to 84. Holyoke Medical Center has not announced a partner in the project.

Like the Baystate project, Holyoke Medical Center’s plan is about two years in the future. Keroack said he does not see Holyoke Medical Center’s plan as a problem for Baystate’s proposal.

“I think there is enough work for all of us,” he said. “We need beds, and there simply are not enough beds'

Baystate’s plan also involves closing psychiatric beds at its outlying hospitals, but officials say the construction of the new facility will result in a net gain of 51 beds.

When the new hospital opens, the health system will close 22 psychiatric beds at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, 20 at Baystate Noble in Westfield and 27 at Baystate Wing in Palmer.

Baystate will retain 28 psychiatric beds at its main campus in Springfield.

Community opposition to Baystate’s plan has centered on concerns about closing beds in the community hospitals.

"Let's acknowledge those concerns," Sarvet said. "Those are legitimate concerns."

The trade-off of having a new, standalone hospital makes it worth it, Sarvet said. Small psychiatric facilities, he said, just tend to replicate the same programs over and over again.

By centralizing the operation, Baystate and Kindred will be able to create specialized programs -- and not have, for example, someone who is depressed and withdrawn with someone who is aggressive.

"So when we build a brand new psychiatric hospital from the ground up we can design outdoor spaces, we can design spaces for group therapy that would be impossible in a general hospital, a medical, surgical building," Sarvet said.

Keroack said something as simple as a patient cafeteria -- rather than having food brought to a room on a tray, as is done in a hospital setting -- can be therapeutic in psychiatric care.

"It's kind of less like a hospital and more like a residential setting," Keroack said.

The existing psychiatric units in the community hospitals are also not up to modern standards.

"Like most psychiatric units, they are in old parts of the hospital that would require considerable upgrade to get them to be decent," he said.

Keroack said closing beds in Greenfield, Westfield and Palmer is also a condition of working with a partner like Kindred that is making a big financial investment. “What they wanted from us, of course, is that we not compete with them,” he said.

Sarvet said families may encounter challenges, including transportation issues, in visiting loved ones in Holyoke -- and there is a benefit to offering treatment in the regional hospitals. But again, he said, it’s a trade-off and Baystate is working with organizations in the communities to provide transportation plans.

Following the end of the U.S. HealthVest partnership, Baystate took its plan to the market as a request for proposals, Keroack said. It received 11 responses, narrowed the list to four finalists and did site visits.

Kindred stood out because of its robust electronic medical records program and its commitment to quality, according to Keroack.

Sarvet cited the organization’s management of quality, and what he called a sophisticated infrastructure for quality oversight.

Kindred’s history has been in providing physical rehabilitation in inpatient settings, he said.

Keroack said Kindred is already a partner with Baystate in providing physical rehabilitation services at Noble Hospital.

Sarvet and Keroack acknowledged Mercy’s difficulty in recruiting psychiatrists, but Keroack says Baystate is in a good position to recruit them, in part due to Sarvet’s work.

Sarvet said Baystate provides opportunities that some smaller hospitals cannot because it has residency programs and fellowships for doctors.

“It’s harder to have an academic career (at some hospitals),” he said. “You are distant to academic programs. But with all the learners we have at Baystate, we can offer those teaching opportunities. If you can marry the teaching, the research opportunities, and the clinical opportunities, you can attract the right people.”

Those programs -- the psychiatric residency has 16 students and graduates four people a year -- also provides a pipeline of new psychiatrists, Sarvet said.

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