Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services and the operator of a suburban Detroit psychiatric hospital each want to develop new inpatient mental health facilities in Kent County.
Pine Rest and Auburn Hills-based Havenwyck Hospital Inc. both filed proposals this month seeking state approval for new psychiatric hospitals. The two will compete for approval of the additional adult psychiatric inpatient beds now available in Kent County under state certificate of need (CON) regulations.
In seeking to add to the 162 adult inpatient beds now licensed at the 68th Street campus in Cutlerville, which also has 36 beds for children and adolescents, Grand Rapids-based Pine Rest is responding to a growing need, said Harmony Gould, Pine Rest’s vice president of hospital and residential services.
“We really see a need in the community that we would like to meet,” Gould said. “We have seen in the last year or two what feels at times like explosive growth and need for inpatient psychiatric beds.”
Pine Rest has also seen a similar increase in outpatient visits, she said.
Pine Rest’s inpatient patient volumes initially grew 20 percent “when things really started rolling with COVID,” and then declined when state stay-at-home orders took effect in March and early April, Gould said. Inpatient volumes have since gone back up and a seasonal decline Pine Rest typically experiences during the summer never occurred this year, Gould said.
“We did not see the slowdown,” she said. “And it’s not looking to slow down at all right now.”
Inpatient cases also are higher acuity and more complex, Gould said.
It remains unclear what’s driving the increases, said Pine Rest COO Bob Nykamp. The COVID-19 pandemic that has led to increases in the incidence rates for depression and anxiety, population growth and less stigma about seeking care for a mental health issue are all factors driving demand, Nykamp said.
Pine Rest proposes a $15 million inpatient hospital housed in a new wing and renovated space at the Betty Van Andel Center at the Cutlerville campus, according to documents filed with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Pine Rest has a “fairly aggressive plan” to have the first 40 adult inpatient beds open by December 2021 if it gets CON approval from the state, Gould said.
Over the last several years, Pine Rest recorded a daily adult inpatient occupancy rate around 80 percent, according to state data. In 2019, Pine Rest’s inpatient psychiatric center recorded a daily occupancy rate of 79.6 percent with 5,442 discharges and an eight-day average length of stay.
Havenwyck plans
Havenwyck Hospital — owned by Pennsylvania-based Universal Health Services Inc., a large for-profit provider of medical and mental health care — also wants to develop a new psychiatric hospital in Kent County.
Havenwyck seeks state certificate of need approval for 60 adult inpatient beds at a new $20.5 million facility in the Venture Office Park at 64th Street and Byron Center. In a separate proposal filed with the state for the same site, Havenwyck seeks CON approval for 24 psychiatric beds for geriatric patients at a cost of $8.6 million.
Universal Health Services operates 26 acute care hospitals, 330 behavioral health facilities, 41 outpatient and ambulatory care facilities in 37 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. Its facilities include Forest View Hospital in Grand Rapids, a psychiatric facility with 77 adult beds and 31 beds for children and adolescents.
Forest View Hospital last year recorded an 89.5-percent adult daily occupancy rate with 2,580 discharges and a 9.7-day average length of stay, according to state data.
The publicly traded Universal Health Services (NYSE: UHS) through the first half of 2020 recorded total revenue of $5.55 billion with $400.9 million in net income. The corporation’s behavioral health care facilities accounted for $2.56 billion in revenue through midyear with $494.4 million in income before taxes, according to a quarterly financial filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Another filing to the state by Havenwyck targeted a similar project for a site on Wilson Avenue in Grandville. Havenwyck as of Thursday had not followed up that initial letter of intent with a full CON application.
The proposals to the state from Pine Rest and Havenwyck followed Kalamazoo-based Bronson Healthcare’s plan announced in early September for an 83-bed psychiatric hospital to replace Bronson Battle Creek’s existing Fieldstone Center psychiatric facility that presently has 39 licensed psychiatric inpatient beds.
