A new behavioral health facility will expand access to critical services in North Texas for people with serious mental health issues.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is partnering with UT Southwestern Medical Center to open the first state behavioral health hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Dr. Daniel Podolsky, president of UT Southwestern Medical Center, said the Texas Behavioral Health Center is expected to start accepting patients early this summer, but it will take some time before the facility is able to operate at full capacity.
“We're still working on that timeline,” Podolsky said. “There are a number of steps…some of those are just technical…but also this will be a significant expansion of a workforce.”
The facility in Dallas’ Southwestern Medical District on Harry Hines Boulevard will include almost 300 inpatient beds, with 200 dedicated to adult patients. Children’s Health made a $261 million donation to include an additional 92 inpatient beds for pediatric patients – making it one of the largest inpatient pediatric facilities in the country, Podolsky said.
The new center could require as many as 1,600 new employees – of which Podolsky said “virtually all” will be new hires.
UT Southwestern has been involved in the project since the beginning – tapped by the legislature to lead the planning, design and construction of the new facility in Dallas. The state recently tapped UT Southwestern to be in charge of operating the new facility.
“We had provisionally expected and hoped, but realizing the decision was going to be made as it has been now by the legislature,” Podolsky said.
The facility is part of the state’s plan to expand inpatient behavioral health care and access that began almost a decade ago. Since 2017, lawmakers have approved more than $2 billion to replace and renovate the state’s psychiatric hospitals.
“We saw that the need was so great,” Podolsky said. “There was an opportunity here, not just to create capacity, but to think from first principles. How can we make a facility that would be the best possible for the care of these patients? And how can you develop approaches which can improve the outcomes? Understanding that the patients that this hospital will serve are among those who historically have had least access to care.”
Without inpatient beds, Podolsky said patients with serious mental health issues often get stuck in two places: emergency rooms and jails. He said there are hundreds of patients receiving care in facilities that aren’t equipped to provide it.
“The jail ends up being the largest mental health care facility because of the lack of ability to transfer those individuals to an inpatient setting,” Podolsky said.
Texas operates nine state hospitals and one residential youth center. The closest one to Dallas is the hospital in Terrell, which serves more than two dozen counties and is currently undergoing an expansion.
Podolsky said UT Southwestern approached the project looking to create a “hub of innovation.”
The new hospital will include capacity for “interventional psychiatry,” which includes new and developing types of treatments that have shown promise and potential to accelerate responses to treatment. In addition, the Texas Behavioral Health Center will offer the first “partial hospitalization program” in Texas in which patients who no longer need around-the-clock care can still receive ongoing intensive treatment.
“This is both a means of hopefully getting better outcomes in reducing readmissions and transitions…of patients to really remain in the community setting over the long term but also allows us to get that much more efficient use of the facility,” Podolsky said.
The facility also includes a substantial investment in other areas, including workforce pipeline development and pediatric behavioral health.
As a part of UT Southwestern’s campus, the hospital will help expand the ability to train behavioral health care specialists. Podolsky said this helps address the “significant shortfall we have as a state.”
He said this was an investment from the state, UT Southwestern, Children’s Health and other community stakeholders – with the goal of improving behavioral health care for more than just North Texas.
“We are going to be benefiting not just the region, not just state, but the country more broadly, even as we're serving, primarily, the good of our patients,” Podolsky said.
Abigail Ruhman is KERA’s health reporter. Got a tip? Email Abigail at aruhman@kera.org.
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