Acadia Forms JV with Henry Ford Health System

Acadia Healthcare (Nasdaq: ACHC) has formed a joint venture with Henry Ford Health System to bring a new behavioral health hospital to the Detroit area. The pair announced the JV Wednesday. 

Headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, Acadia bills itself as the nation’s largest standalone provider of behavioral health services. As of Sept. 30, it boasted 582 facilities and about 18,300 beds across 40 states, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. It provides care to patients in inpatient psychiatric hospitals, specialty treatment facilities, residential treatment centers and outpatient clinics.

Meanwhile, Henry Ford Health System is a non-profit, integrated health system located in Michigan. It consists of six hospitals, one of which is an inpatient psychiatric facility. The health system, which is one of the nation’s top academic medical centers, also has a medical group, a physician network and more than 250 outpatient locations, among other health care services.

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“We chose Acadia because of its commitment to patient- and family-centered care, strong clinical outcomes and proven track record of collaborating with health systems across the country,” Wright Lassiter, III — president and CEO of Henry Ford Health System — said in a press release announcing the news.

Construction on the hospital will start after all regulatory approvals have been met. 

The project is set to open in late 2022. When complete, the facility will have 192 beds, with room to expand to keep up with additional demand. It will offer the full continuum of inpatient care, while also providing academic site training for inpatient psychiatry residents, medical students, nurses and other healthcare professionals.

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Acadia CEO Debbie Osteen said she’s pleased to be partnering with Henry Ford to address the unmet need for psychiatric care services in the Detroit area.

“This partnership is a strong example of one of our growth strategies to continue to expand our treatment network through strategic joint ventures with many of the country’s leading health organizations,” Osteen said in the press release.

The JV announcement comes about a month after Osteen and her colleagues expressed their continued commitment to the acute care space, where the company continues to see volume and revenue growth.

“Most of our new facilities and joint ventures have been in the acute service line,” Acadia CFO David Duckworth said last month during a presentation at the Credit Suisse 29th Annual Virtual Healthcare Conference. “And then even the [recent] bed additions to existing facilities have been more heavily weighted toward the acute service line.”

He said the trend is a function of the demand and opportunities Acadia has seen in new and existing markets. Those opportunities helped Acadia hit a record-high census in October, a trend Osteen expects to see continue into the year ahead. 

“We believe — because of the strong demand trends and the fact that we have such diversity in the service lines — that this [high census trend] is going to continue into 2021,” she said on the company’s Q3 earnings call.

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