Also for hospital systems it’s wildly unprofitable. You make your money in two places in medicine, elective surgeries and in the emergency department. Mental healthcare is slow, in the extreme cases you’re dealing with unpleasant patients that are hostile to the care you’re trying to provide, and you often have to house them and feed them for extended periods of time knowing they don’t have any money to reimburse you.
That’s why the hospital I’m working at has built a multimillion dollar cardiac surgery tower (not a unit, not a few floors, an entire tower), but scrapped the plans to rebuild the aging and woefully inadequate inpatient psych facility.
If we can’t squeeze every cent from you we will only do the bare minimum that the CMC requires from us.