Jeffrey Woods delivers remarks on Jennie Edmundson Hospital Behavioral Health

Good morning everybody, and what a tremendous day it is to be here for the groundbreaking of this state-of-the-art, 96-bed behavioral health hospital that will serve the entire lifespan for patients in need of mental health and substance abuse services. I want to especially thank our partners Methodist Jenny Edmundson and the leadership and the board's judgment in selecting Acadia and partnering in such a full and formidable way with Acadia towards this project. I'd also like to thank our colleagues who have already spoken this morning, and I will tell you, because I am the only thing standing between you and your own car air conditioning, I did reduce my speech from an hour to 45 minutes, so it should be fun. So I do want to share with you a couple of things. First, I want to tell you my why, why this matters to me. As a doctor of nursing practice, I am an old nurse, an old psych nurse, been doing psych nursing for 30ish years. And I came to psych nursing out of the army. I was a commissioned officer in the United States Army for eight years. We did some tough stuff leading up to and through the first Iraq war. And when I came back, the Army said, 'Where do you want to go, Captain?' And I said, 'I want to go to Hawaii.' And I thought they would just laugh at me. They didn't laugh. They said, 'You can go to Schofield Army Barracks, which is infantry, or you can go to Tripler Army Medical Center, which is this big pink hospital up on a hill.' I said, 'Send me to the hospital. I've had enough time messing around in the dirt.' And I went to this hospital, and I was so impressed: 750-bed, full-service general hospital with amazing medical care, the amazing care they provided to our service members, to their dependents. But what I saw as a gap, and this is 1993, what I saw was a gap in the provision of mental health services, social support services that were necessary for the full healing of both the service members and their families. And that inspired my heart, and from that point forward, I pursued my education and have lived in mental health services ever since. This new hospital, you've seen pictures and diagrams around. I just want to emphasize a couple of things. This hospital is purpose-built for the dignity and the integrity and the well-being of our patients, our staff, and our community. Lots of open space, large rooms and natural sunlight, activity spaces, gymnasiums, recreational courtyards off of each of the patient care units to really provide a full treatment for the whole person, mind, body, and spirit, which is central to our mission and our collective mission in the care of the patients that come to us. I'm going to share something that just happened last week, and it's a little bit difficult because I want you to think about who our patients are. Our patients are some of you, maybe. They are our friends, they are our family, they are our neighbors, they are the people sometimes who are the most disadvantaged in the community and in need of help and a place for healing. Those are our patients. A week ago, we learned that an individual in our finance team who had left our company about a year and a half ago, a 36-year-old young man, passed away by suicide. And that moved the hearts of all of us at Acadia, because he's one of ours. He's somebody we knew and know and loved. So it can affect all of us at any place at any time. And this hospital offers that hope, that promise, not only for healing but for the opportunity to inspire healing for the community and to give folks access to care that is so desperately needed. As you have heard from others, so my final words, well, I've got a couple of people I need to thank. So my final words, I would just encourage each of you every day: be kind to one another, be tenderhearted to one another, and know that this hospital is a setting where we will share in those values as we care for this community and participate with Methodist Jenny Edmundson in the provision of that care. So thank you very much. I would also like to just acknowledge a few folks. Dr. Naser Khan, who is modest but he is a very accomplished operator and a very accomplished internal medicine physician. Dr. Khan, thank you, sir. I'd also like to thank Isa Diaz, who was our senior vice president of strategic affairs, without whom this project would not have moved forward because she is the driver of our opportunity with Methodist Jenny Edmundson and the work required to bring this to life. A number of members of our team are here as well, our executive team from Acadia, including Miles Kramer, who's a VP of strategic growth; Nav Kong, who is our chief quality officer; Brennan Riles, who is our vice president of strategic operations; Jessica Lincoln, who is our division president; Dwight Willingham, who is also an operations group president over the eastern part of the United States; and I sure didn't miss anybody, Eric Spindler, who is our director of strategic operations, who all came out here to join us today for this important event. I would also like to mention Chip Hill with Stangle Hill Architecture, who I see in the back. Chip has designed so many beautiful healing hospitals for our company and for our partners, and we're really grateful for the continued collaboration and work with Stangle Hill Architecture and Chip Hill. Silas Powell, who is our construction manager for this project, and of course Graham Contractors. These are the folks that are going to bring this to life, and you can see some of the work that's been done behind us, and over the next 16 months or so, they will turn what you see in front of you today into an extraordinary hospital. I would also like to thank the first responders. I saw fire and law enforcement here today. The relationship between our organizations, the hospital and first responders, and our ability to be supportive of first responder needs, we look forward to that, and we thank you for your service and we thank you for the dedication.