The Permian Basin Behavioral Health Center marked the grand opening of its new mental health facility in Midland.
Local leaders, health professionals and state officials gathered to celebrate the opening, which included remarks and tours of the facility.
The hospital was designed to address what leaders described as the area’s most urgent health care gap: access to quality mental and behavioral health services.
“For many, many years, mental health needs here in the Permian Basin, just like so many other places in Texas, have gone unserved and unmet,” said state Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa.
“Having a world class facility like this with tremendous practitioners is really a game changer for everybody in the Permian Basin. Whether you need behavioral health services or not, it makes our community better and stronger.”
The 200-bed facility is located between Midland and Odessa near the intersection of Farm-to-Market Road 1788 and State Highway 191. The PBBHC is a partnership between the Midland County Hospital District and the Ector County Hospital District.
The facility is the product of a public-private partnership that includes state funding, local hospital districts and more than 150 donors.
The new facility features a wall dedicated to the donors who helped make the project possible, said Russell Meyers, president of the PBBHC Board.
The PBBHC’s inpatient services will serve children, adolescents, adults and seniors, with each group housed in its own neighborhood.
In addition to inpatient care, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs will be available on-site for patients of all ages.
The hospital will open in phases, beginning this year with one adult unit and one competency restoration unit.
The center will also offer space for expanded outpatient operations for PermiaCare and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center’s Permian Basin Department of Psychiatry.
“At the end of the day, patients who are going to be receiving treatment here, both inpatient and outpatient, are the ones whose lives are really going to be changed and transformed,” Landgraf said.
“I think we’re actually going to be a blueprint and an attraction for these types of services for people from all over Texas.”
Former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans praised the project as a “shining example” of civic leadership and what local citizens can accomplish together.
“Look what Permian Basin citizens can dream, they can do and this is a really grand example of that,” he said.