Oceans Healthcare’s Growth Is Beating the Mental Health Odds

In a state that ranks 50th in the nation for access to mental health, Plano-based Oceans Healthcare is expanding its presence in the Lone Star State and beyond, bucking the trend and growing a business in the path.

The local environment for mental health does not encourage expansion in the state. Texas also ranks near the bottom in per capita spending on mental health. In 2020, the state spent $40.52 per person for mental health services. Meanwhile, more than $117 million was Cut from the state Health and Human Services Commission in 2021. In a Mental Health America report of nonprofit advocates, Texas ranked last for access to mental health care. Access is a measure of health insurance rates, access to treatment, quality and cost of insurance, access to special education, and availability of mental health staff.

While funding has been an issue, access to inpatient beds has been another factor. Dallas is the largest city in the country without a state behavioral health hospital (although that is about to change), and there is still a shortage of mental health beds. At the Dallas County Jail, WFAA reported that patients who needed treatment in an inpatient mental health setting, on average, spent seven months before being admitted to a minimum-security mental health bed.

Add a pandemic that increased the need for behavioral health services (about one in four people experience significant behavioral health problems at some point in their life) and a resulting shortage of workers that has left the health industry scrambling for staff, and the market made even more complicated.

But Oceans Healthcare is optimistic about the future, doubling in size since 2017. Founded nearly 20 years ago primarily as a provider of geriatric behavioral services, the system now treats all ages and has 33 locations between West Texas and Mississippi. That includes 23 inpatient hospital campuses and 20 intensive outpatient programs. In 2021, the system treated 21,000 patients.

Oceans CEO Stuart Archer began his healthcare career by supplementing his football coaching career with a second job as a nursing assistant at a long-term intensive care hospital. The company focuses on rural settings and establishes a presence where other mental health providers do not exist. In more than half of the communities in the system, it is the only mental health provider, and almost all locations are in a medically underserved area. The hospital also works with all payers.

“It has been a woefully neglected, under-resourced and underappreciated space for decades,” says Archer.

Oceans’ growth has been a balance between developing new facilities from scratch, joint ventures (such as its partnership with Louisiana State University Medical Center), and acquiring underperforming facilities. ‘We are very excited about our joint venture. LSU Ochsner Hospital in Shreveport,” says Archer. “We are partnering with those two leading institutions in that community, tripling the capacity for inpatient and outpatient services.”

In many of these communities, the emergency room becomes the de facto mental health facility, as there are often very few options. The emergency room is not only more expensive, but it’s also not a good place to treat mental health issues. Oceans is working with hospitals to be able to refer patients to their facilities without a referral from the hospital emergency room.

Expansion, aided by a recent injection of capital from Webster Equity Partners, has not always been easy. Telemedicine has become an attractive option for therapists, and a shortage of doctors and nurses has added challenges to staffing during expansion. Lack of state funding for mental health and limits on the amount of time spent in a mental health facility are other challenges with costly downstream impacts.

“We are paying the price for not investing in our mental health,” says Archer. “Now is the time to act on many of these things. It’s about seeing behavioral health providers in the same way as other providers in the health system, not paying them less and not putting obstacles in their way that other providers would never see.”

The system is poised for further growth in Texas and elsewhere. With the growing gap between urban and rural health care, organizations that focus on rural mental health are in greater need now than ever. Others are taking note. The Texas Hospital Association Recognized Oceans’ work in screening for Abilene depression among patients and demonstrating its effectiveness in improving conditions.

While strategic decisions have been a major factor in Oceans’ continued expansion, Archer attributes success to the quality of staff during difficult times. “We have persevered and thrived, and the single biggest factor in our success has been our caregivers and our frontline employees,” she says. “For people who work in behavioral health at any level, it has to be more than just a job. It is a vocation”.