Psychiatric hospital to open on Sept. 1
Facility to be located at old VRMC
Brownsville city officials hope to see a psychiatric hospital opening here sometime in September.
City Manager Charlie Cabler on Thursday said the unofficial opening date is Sept. 1 for the 37-bed facility to be located at the old Valley Regional Medical Center on Ted Hunt Boulevard.
Valley Baptist Medical Center-Brownsville officials announced last week they planned to open a psychiatric hospital at the old VRMC site.
Cabler met on Wednesday with builder Terry Ray, who owned the property, to discuss the logistics of the old hospital and upgrades or repairs that needed to be done to make it a functioning facility.
“The goal is to give the city the kind of medical assistance” it needs, Cabler said.
Because of a lack of psychiatrists in the city, the Brownsville Independent School District had to transport children to neighboring Hidalgo County to receive mental health care.
“That’s why we are very thankful for the medical community taking the lead” and coming up with a solution, Cabler said.
The need of psychiatric care in Brownsville and Cameron County reached a high point last month after former Brownsville mayor Margal M.Vicars publicly announced that he was unable to find a psychiatrist in Brownsville who could treat his wife Sarah, who suffers from depression.
A Mental Health Task Force Committee was formed and held its first meeting earlier this month in which Harlingen psychiatrist Dr. Ricardo Irizarry said the key to attracting psychiatrists to Cameron County is offering sign-on bonuses and creating a clinic where they could treat patients.
On Thursday, the Immediate Needs Crisis Committee, a subcommittee of the Mental Health Task Force, heard from Niazi Baker of Foreign Physicians, a business that recruits foreign doctors to work in the Rio Grande Valley, who said he could help recruit psychiatrists to relocate to the area.
Like Irizarry, Baker said incentives would have to be offered to potential physicians such as set salaries, moving expenses and sign-on bonuses. Since the physicians Baker recruits are from other countries, the contractor would have to also pay for the physician’s visa, which is about $10,000.
Baker said the total recruitment process takes about six months and his finder’s fee is about $18,000. He has been recruiting doctors for about six years and recruited doctors for the Starr and Brooks counties, he said.
