Psychiatric hospital's new owners planning $50M replacement facility

Three months after acquiring the Belmont Behavioral Hospital, Acadia Healthcare Co. is planning to replace the aging psychiatric care facility with a six-story medical center that would be part of a $50 million campus renovation project.

Acadia (NASDAQ: ACHJC) of Franklin, Tennessee, bought what was formerly known as the Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment from the Einstein Healthcare Network for $35 million in a deal that closed June 30. The purchase also included Einstein’s Belmont health center in Northeast Philadelphia and its community outpatient program for the elderly in Germantown.

Mark Schor, who Acadia brought in as CEO, said the initial plan was to invest about $10 million in capital improvements to upgrade and modernize the 147-bed behavioral health care facility in Northwest Philadelphia.

Those plans changed after they got some price estimates.

“We brought people in to look at the place and they said it would cost $40 million to really fix up this place,” Schor said. “[Acadia] made a very quick decision to build a new hospital.”

Schor said the plan is to build a six-story, 178,400 replacement hospital on the property by knocking down an existing structure so the facility can remain open while the work is being done. He said the company is still evaluating options for exactly where to build, but a leading contender is the area in and around a rehabilitation services building next to the main hospital building at 4200 Monument Road.

The project would require obtaining building variances from the city. Schor said they plan to meet with community groups to get their feedback on the company’s plans for the site before finalizing anything.

The replacement hospital would provide space for the hospital to expand its child and adolescent programs, and allow the 147-bed hospital — which has mostly two- and three-bed patient rooms — to create more single-bed patient rooms.

The long-term plans call for knocking down the existing hospital and using the land for green space and an entrance area, plus constructing a medical office building on the campus.

“The amount of improvements you can make not only aesthetically but also from a safety perspective when you are building a building with start-of-the-art knowledge and concepts is just light years ahead of where we were with this building, which was built 50 or 60 years ago,” Schor said. Among the improvements he envisions for the replacement hospital are:

·         A separate ambulance entrance;

·         A larger admissions area;

·         Support services such as sensory rooms — special lighting, music, and objects to aid therapy — on patient units;

·         Improved site lines for staff monitoring patients, and

·         Improved safety components for patients and staff.

Schor said a new hospital will also allow Belmont to move away from its “institutional” appearance. “The field of behavioral health has evolved to a recovery orientation,” he said. “You want a place to feel more homey, have the hardwood-floors-in-the-living-room type of atmosphere.”

The hospital, which had 450 employees when Acadia took over July 1, has already hired about 50 new employees to replace the 60-to-70 nurses and support staff who took other jobs at Einstein or left the hospital during the six months after the sale was announced in December.

“We held a job fair and we thought 40 or 50 people would come,” Schor said. “More than 300 people came.”

He said Belmont is continuing to maintain its academic partnerships with Einstein and Thomas Jefferson University, and developing a doctoral program with the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic medicine.

"On any given day there can be more than 100 students here," Schor said.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal