Rising costs and ongoing staff shortages have led many behavioral health facilities and units to close up shop, creating or exacerbating care deserts.
Here are five behavioral health facilities or units that have closed or announced plans to close in 2023:
- Yakima, Wash.-based behavioral health provider Comprehensive Healthcare is closing two of its facilities in Goldendale and White Salmon. Both offer a range of services including 24-hour crisis intervention. They had been the only crisis services provider in the area since 1997.
- Wauwatosa, Wis.-based Froedtert Health closed the behavioral health unit at its Menomonee Falls hospital. The May 12 closure comes alongside a hiring freeze for some positions as Froedtert Health grapples with razor-thin margins. The system posted a 1 percent operating margin on $1.74 billion of revenue for the first six months of its fiscal year for the period ending Dec. 31, compared to a 5.7 percent margin in the same period the previous year.
Froedtert Menomonee Falls Hospital had 800 psychiatric admissions in 2022 as the only hospital systemwide that listed psychiatric admissions.
- Chelsea (Mich.) Hospital is closing its adult inpatient behavioral health unit at the end of 2023. The hospital, part of Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health, will transfer many of the unit's resources to Trinity Health Ann Arbor. The unit had struggled with regulatory issues and staffing since before the start of the pandemic.
- Greenville, N.C.-based ECU Health closed its behavioral health inpatient unit and five of its clinics following a $46 million fiscal loss in 2022. The health system said uninsured or underinsured patients and cost of travel staff are the main reasons for the loss.
ECU had plans to close the Roanoke Rapids, N.C., unit once a new behavioral health facility opens in Greenville, N.C., in 2025. A labor shortage sped up its closure.