Methodist Health System | Methodist Richardson Medical Center | Shine | Summer 2015

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Expanding its range of services to
the community, this spring the Methodist
Richardson Medical Center – Campus
for Continuing Care began offering
expanded behavioral health services
and became the new home to our Sleep
Disorders Center.
Sleep Disorders Center
The new home for our accredited Sleep
Disorders Center is designed to make
patient sleep studies more effective
than ever.
“The rooms are large and beautiful,
with brand-new equipment that can
be relocated and adjusted as needed for
different sleep tests and patient comfort,”
says Suzanne Grayson, director of
neurodiagnostic services.
The new technology includes a
pan-zoom-tilt camera that allows sleep
technicians to get better video and
physicians to more easily diagnose sleep
disorders that involve movement. We
also now offer continuous blood pressure
monitoring, which helps patients better
understand how sleep affects their
overall health.
“People don’t always understand how
important sleep is, but they do understand
that high blood pressure is bad,” Grayson
says. “When they see that adjustments to
their sleep actually help lower their blood
pressure, they’re more likely to stick with
their treatment plans.”
Methodist Richardson is one of the only
sleep centers in the area accredited by the
American Association of Sleep Medicine
and now offers accredited home sleep
services, as well.
Older adult behavioral
health services
This July, Methodist Richardson will open
a new 22-bed inpatient unit dedicated
to helping older adults with psychiatric
disorders, such as depression, bipolar
disorder, chemical dependency, and
dementia. It will also expand outpatient
services to better serve these patients.
The unit has a warm, homelike
atmosphere, and with a full-service
emergency department just down the hall,
patients are safer and have support they
wouldn’t receive at a freestanding facility.
The staff includes board-certified
psychiatrists, all with experience caring
for the geriatric population; medical
psychiatric registered nurses, some certified
in dementia treatment; and licensed
chemical dependency counselors and social
workers, among others.
“We know that these patients are
somebody’s mother or father, grandmother
or grandfather, sister, brother, cousin, and
we treat each patient as an individual,”
says Kim Branum, BSN, BA, RN, CDP,
director of behavioral health and addiction
recovery at Methodist Richardson. “If I
can say this program is good enough for
my family, then that’s saying a lot, and I
would definitely send my family here. We
have a team of people who truly care about
what happens to these patients and about
their successes.”
New services have arrived
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