- Henry Ford Health’s Madison Heights hospital will become a 75-bed provider of adult mental health care as early as this spring, later expanding to 100 beds.
- The new mental health services dramatically expands care for adults in southeast Michigan
- The Detroit-based hospital system will continue to operate the hospital’s emergency services
A suburban Detroit hospital now owned by Henry Ford Health will become a 75-bed mental health hospital as early as spring 2027.
Warren-based Trillium Health Care Management will reopen the Madison Heights hospital as an inpatient behavioral health facility, dramatically expanding behavioral health care access in eastern Oakland and western Macomb counties, according to an announcement Thursday afternoon.
The facility, which Henry Ford sold to Trillium at an undisclosed price, eventually will grow its inpatient services to 100 beds. It also will provide a continuum of behavioral health care that will include partial-day and outpatient mental health programs.
For years, mental health advocates have lamented a lack of inpatient services throughout Michigan. In announcing the plans, officials noted that more than 3.6 million Michiganders live in a community without enough mental health professionals, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Related:
- State lawmakers describe ‘lack of service’ in Michigan’s mental health system
- Experts: Henry Ford, Ascension Michigan venture likely to impact care, costs
- Bridge reel: Henry Ford’s expansion
In addition to the need to “intensify” behavioral health care, the Madison Heights hospital — despite its busy emergency department — had been operating at a “moderate to low” volume, said Denise Brooks-Williams, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Detroit-based Henry Ford Health.
The announcement is good news for a state in need of more mental health services, said Bob Sheehan, chief executive officer of the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan.
When it operates with 100 beds, he said, the still-unnamed hospital will be “by far” one of the largest providers in the state, he said.
Moreover, “it takes expertise to run a psychiatric hospital, and (Trillium) brings that to the table,” he said.
Henry Ford will begin to take beds offline in late March, and renovations by Trillium are expected to take about a year, she said.
Still, Henry Ford won’t completely vacate the building.
Rather, it will continue to operate the hospital’s 24-hour emergency department, staffing it with Henry Ford physicians, nurses and other medical providers and leasing the space from Trillium.
Brooks-Williams called the venture a “partnership” even though the hospital and emergency room will operate independently of each other.
“There’ll be another access point for us to be able to provide care,” she said, referring to Henry Ford patients who need behavioral health services.
The facility’s inpatient and surgical services shift to Henry Ford’s Warren Hospital, about five miles away, and non-emergency Madison Heights hospital staff will be able transfer to other Henry Ford Health locations, Brooks-Williams said.
“There’s a significant intent to ensure that employees are placed within our large-footprint health system,” she said.
The agreement is pending regulatory approvals, including the state’s certificate-of-need process, Brooks-Williams said.
Detroit-based Henry Ford Health significantly expanded its footprint in 2024 with the acquisition of eight Ascension hospitals, and construction continues on a $3 billion expansion of its downtown campus — a “hospital for the next 100 years” it has been called.
Turning over the Madison Heights site to Trillium leaves Henry Ford with a dozen acute care hospitals, in addition to three behavioral health hospitals — the 192-bed Henry Ford Behavioral Hospital which opened early last year, the Henry Ford Brighton Center for Recovery, which it acquired in the Ascension deal, and the Henry Ford Maplegrove Center, also on the West Bloomfield campus.
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