The Story

United Health Services (“UHS”) is a leader in the healthcare management industry with facilities offering Acute and Behavioral Health Care across the country. Using New Market Tax Credits, UHS is constructing a new, state-of-the-art replacement residential trauma center at its Mountain Youth Academy in Mountain City, Tennessee. This facility exclusively serves children and adolescents, ages 5 to 17, seeking treatment for trauma, substance abuse, and other mental health needs. Located in a Medically Underserved Area, Mountain City’s community and neighboring areas do not have sufficient beds for trauma-related services. With the closest Level 3 Residential Treatment Center (“RTC”) located over 120 miles away, at-risk youth and their families are often forced to travel long distances to receive the care needed. UHS will expand Mountain Youth’s capacity by retaining and upgrading the existing 88 beds and adding 32 new beds. With the addition of these beds, the 120-bed facility will be equipped to serve an additional 90 youths for a total of 220 youths served annually within five years, with the average patient length of stay between 6 to 9 months.

The Financing

• Total Project Cost: $20.9 million
• MuniStrategies Allocation: $8 million (additional allocation from other CDEs)

The Impacts

• Healthcare Access: With the construction of the new Mountain Youth facility, UHS expects to serve more than 1,000 patients within the next seven years, a significant portion of which will be low-income individuals. Currently, approximately 97% of all of the patients served are either enrolled in Medicaid or have no funding source at all.
• Jobs: The Project will create 50 full-time jobs, 76% of which will be accessible to the low-income community. The project will also retain 135 project full-time jobs. The jobs created have an average wage of $27.39 an hour, which is 195% of the single adult living wage in Johnson County of $14.02 an hour. The construction of the new facility will create an additional 175 temporary construction jobs.
• Community Health Outcomes: Mountain Youth Academy will offer a secure facility for youth to address their mental health needs with a trauma-focused care approach. UHS will offer individual, group, and family trauma therapy as well as other treatment methodologies to help at-risk youth deal with traumas they have experienced. Once construction is complete, the facility will be able to transition to more individualized units, which will allow Mountain Youth to provide greater diversity in the treatment of patients as they will have the capacity to implement new programs in the newly added individualized units.
• Workforce Development: UHS provides several training and education advancement opportunities for its employees, including: a Tuition Reimbursement and Assistance Program to help employees obtain Associates, Bachelors, or Doctorate degrees, internships for students majoring in nursing, social work, and psychology degrees, and on-the-job general skills training to promote job accessibility for those without higher levels of education or other barriers to employment.