As health systems across the country wrestle with surging behavioral health demand and a shortage of specialized infrastructure, Oceans Healthcare is betting that partnership is the answer.
The Plano, Texas-based system has been building a joint venture model with health systems that it believes can scale, Chief Development Officer Daryl Doise and Vice President of Corporate Development Brach Myers told Becker’s.
The first proof point is Louisiana Behavioral Health, a joint venture with Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport in Louisiana that has been operating since 2021. Oceans also entered a joint partnership with Norman (Okla.) Regional Medical Center in 2021, opening a 48-bed behavioral health hospital in 2024 that more than doubled inpatient capacity. Now, with a partnership in development with Ochsner Lafayette General, the model is starting to look less like a one-off and more like a playbook.
“Ochsner LSU Health had an existing small unit within their main hospital campus — it was an acute care floor that they were using for behavioral health, essentially — and they had a desire to improve access to care,” Mr. Doise said. “They were consistently having to try to treat patients with behavioral health issues in their ED and were often overwhelmed there.”
Oceans and Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport opted to build something new rather than retrofit a facility. They constructed a 90-bed behavioral health hospital in the community, separate from the main campus. The resulting joint venture is its own legal entity, one majority owned by Oceans and co-governed by a board with members from both organizations. Day-to-day operations are managed by Oceans, but the relationship with the health system remains active.
“Behavioral health patients’ journey — probably 90% of the time — brings them to an emergency department,” Mr. Doise said. “We work with the emergency departments to get that patient to the right level of care just as quickly as possible. We’ve had great results there, reducing wait times for these patients, and at the same time creating operational efficiencies for the health system.”
Why health systems are drawn to the model
Mr. Myers joined Oceans earlier in 2026 as part of the company’s push to scale the partnership strategy. He spent 20 years at LHC Group, where he helped build a portfolio of more than 300 hospital joint ventures across 40 states in home health and hospice.
Mr. Myers said the structure of any given venture will vary, and that flexibility is intentional.
“The reason that you’re not going to hear from us in a specific way that the model looks like this is because we stay very flexible to what the hospital system needs are, and everyone’s needs are different,” he said. “The leadership and the community look different, and so we’re not just going to step in and say, ‘This is the way that this partnership is going to look.'”
Part of what makes the joint venture pitch compelling to health systems, Mr. Myers argued, is that it does not ask them to hand off their mission.
“When these joint ventures are structured correctly, it’s not about [setting aside] the hospital and health system’s mission — it’s expanding their mission,” he said. “It allows the hospital to keep the patient connected to the broader care continuum, while partnering with an organization like us whose full focus is going to be delivering high-quality behavioral healthcare.”
He also pointed to mission and culture alignment as a factor in whether a partnership holds up over time.
“When we are in discussions with a partner, we’re going to get a good sense of what their mission is and how true to it they are, and does that align with our mission,” Mr Myers said. “If those align and the integrity is there and the culture is the right fit, that’s the best partnership.”
Mr. Doise added that a meaningful partnership requires a health system to view behavioral health as a chronic condition.
“A good partner understands that a behavioral health patient with a behavioral health diagnosis has a chronic disease. It’s not diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer. It’s a chronic illness that requires a lifetime of treatment,” he said. “And having a partner that appreciates and understands that aspect of care and wants to improve it for the community.”
The demand is not going away
The national data makes the case on its own.
According to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 48.4 million people 12 or older had a substance use disorder in the past year, and only about 1 in 5 who needed substance use treatment received it. Among adolescents ages 12-17 with a substance use disorder who did not receive treatment, 93.3% did not seek it out or believe they needed it. Mental illness figures tell a similar story: 23.4% of adults — 61.5 million people — had any mental illness in the past year, yet nearly half of those with any mental illness did not receive mental health treatment.
Mr. Myers grounded the business case in national data, noting that behavioral health visits as a share of total ED encounters have increased, with the trend continuing upward.
Over the next decade, behavioral health emergency department visits are projected to increase by 1 million, with adult visits expected to grow 12% and pediatric visits projected to rise 7% — outpacing physical health ED growth. Additionally, more than one-third of the U.S. population — about 122 million people — lives in a mental health professional shortage area, with 45% of behavioral health providers unavailable to treat new Medicare or Medicaid patients.
“There is no denying the demand that exists, and until we can get these services out there and available to the patients who need them, we are failing the system overall,” Mr. Myers said. “Behavioral health is so operationally different from traditional med-surg; it has different staffing needs, different reimbursement complexities, and regulatory considerations that change state to state and federally.”
What’s next
With Louisiana Behavioral Health as the foundation and more systems in the pipeline, Oceans is positioning itself as a long-term institutional partner in behavioral health.
“I joined Oceans because I believe in the partnership model; I spent 20 years doing this in another space and exited that space. ‘Where can we make the biggest impact for the U.S. right now?’ It’s in behavioral health, it’s in this space,” Mr. Myers said. “The operating model is there, quality of care is second to none, and we have a commitment on the advocacy front to educate both at the federal level and in each of the states we’re operating in about what we accomplish alongside hospitals and health systems.”
At the Becker's Fall Behavioral Health Summit, taking place November 4–5 in Chicago, behavioral health leaders and executives will explore strategies for expanding access to care, integrating services, addressing workforce challenges and leveraging innovation to improve outcomes across the behavioral health continuum. Apply for complimentary registration now.