Washington Business Journal: VHC Health teams up with Arlington County for planned behavioral health and rehab facility
By Sara Gilgore – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal, January 24, 2023
VHC's hospital campus is located on North George Mason Drive in Arlington.
VHC Health and Arlington County have signed a letter of intent for the health system to repurchase land that it had previously sold to the county to stand up a new behavioral health and rehab facility about three miles south of its main hospital campus.
The Arlington health system, formerly known as Virginia Hospital Center, plans to purchase 5.8 acres at 601 S. Carlin Springs Road from Arlington County. The purchase price is still being worked out, but VHC said it expects to invest a total of $80 million in the project. The system said it's an effort to meet skyrocketing demand for mental health and substance abuse care amid upticks in opioid drug overdoses.
“With the opioid crisis looming, the data’s very compelling that unfortunately, for the foreseeable future, this is something we need to invest in as a community,” said Melody Dickerson, Senior Vice President of Hospital Operations and Chief Nursing Officer of VHC Health.
Still in the concept phase, the building is envisioned as a single level spanning roughly 85,000 square feet, with underground parking.
Though VHC is already expanding its hospital campus on North George Mason Drive, “we’re still short on space,” said Adrian Stanton, the system's vice president of real estate acquisition and development. “This allows us to expand our ability to provide inpatient and outpatient service to those in need of mental health services.”
It also allows VHC to create separate units based on need and age,with three planned 24-bed inpatient units — one for adults, another for adolescents, and a third for recovery and wellness. It would also have five outpatient programs, from baseline to intensive therapy and a partial hospitalization daytime service for adults. The system also plans to roll out a 14-bed geriatric behavioral health unit in its 453-bed flagship hospital for patients who need a higher level of care.
The new facility would also offer an inpatient rehabilitation unit that would VHC’s current 20 beds on its main campus to a total 40 beds housed within its walls. Those services would be geared toward patients recovering from brain and spinal cord injuries, stroke and other neurological conditions.
All in, the endeavor would add 55 beds to VHC's count, including 16 behavioral health beds not yet in service, and increase its total behavioral health and rehab bed count from 71 to 126 — while also offering capacity to expand other services down the line, Dickerson said.
Women and infant service lines, for instance, are “growing leaps and bounds,” she said. “But we also need additional inpatient beds, so as we look forward five to 10 years out, having that space and being able to reimagine what health care could look like in that area of the hospital is something we’re still working through.”
VHC said it’s shooting to break ground in late 2023 or early 2024, with a delivery target of late 2025.
