The first freestanding, academic medical behavioral health hospital in Florida is slated to open in 2025.
The facility is a collaboration between Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital and Brentwood, Tenn.-based Lifepoint Behavioral Health, and physicians from Tampa-based USF Health Morsani College of Medicine's department of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences will provide inpatient and outpatient specialized care.
Doug Leonardo, who has more than 25 years of experience in behavioral health, was named CEO of the new facility. He was most recently vice president of Medicaid behavioral health at Humana.
Mr. Leonardo sat down with Becker's to discuss how he is setting up the facility for success.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Q: What are the challenges that come with building a behavioral teaching facility? How do you address those?
Doug Leonardo: I think that at the center of the hospital is the team that we put together to help care for these patients. I think putting the right team together, first and foremost, is critical. Having the opportunity to be a behavioral health teaching hospital is pretty amazing. Nationally, we're faced with a huge workforce issue when it comes to behavioral health for all providers — psychiatrists, therapists. Being able to be in a setting where we can help attract, retain and grow that workforce that's going to care for patients now and into the future is a pretty remarkable opportunity.
Q: What goes into preparing the hospital to be successful on Day One?
DL: It's everything from the physical footprint of the facility itself to all the aspects that go into it from a technology standpoint, the safety standpoint, both on the design side, the furnishings that go into it, the hardware on the door, the bed that we use — all of the latest safety equipment that's available is going into this building. Literally, from the ground up, we're thinking through the design, how patients will come into the facility, how they'll move through the facility. There's a lot that goes into that before a patient ever enters our doors, but it's all done with the patient at the center of our decision making.
Q: What are the benefits of partnering with Lifepoint on this facility?
DL: Lifepoint is a national organization. They have facilities across the country. They have expertise in providing psychiatric, hospital-based care. It's a partnership. We will work very closely together to build the program, to build the administrative support that's needed. It's a collaboration, but we work seamlessly together.
Q: Why are more health systems embarking on joint ventures with behavioral providers?
DL: I think it depends on the organization. At the end of the day, you want to marry up what you do well with another partner that does something else extremely well. Tampa General is an amazing provider of healthcare services. USF Health has an amazing psychiatric training program. Lifepoint has a very strong track record of providing excellent quality psychiatric care. Putting those three legs of the stool together gives you a really strong foundation to grow on. I think for us, it makes total sense. Each system needs to make these decisions for themselves, but for us it seemed like a very logical decision to make.
Q: What are the keys to a successful partnership with another organization?
DL: Like any relationship, it's communication. It's being willing to make sure that everybody is clear on what the expectations are, roles and responsibilities. I think beyond that, when you start making decisions with your patient at the center of that decision making, you're all rallying around the same thing. You're all going after the same thing, which is providing an environment that's going to have the best possible outcome for your patient. That's what we stay focused on. That's what is going to make us successful, and what makes this collaboration, I'd say, relatively easy.
Q: What are the biggest behavioral health challenges in Tampa and Florida? How does this facility fit into the solutions?
DL: The workforce is one of the biggest challenges we face in the behavioral health field. That translates into access. I think the more we can do to shore up our workforce, to help ensure that we have people coming into the field who will stay in the field, we will then begin to be able to increase access because we'll have more providers available to treat patients who really need behavioral health services. We've seen increases in suicide rates, especially among our youth, and increases in substance use disorders. There's not a panacea for how we get at this. At the end of the day, if we don't have providers, we're not going to take any ground on addressing some of the most pressing behavioral needs out there. I think that's the greatest value that this offers.