Henry Ford Health's deal to hand off its Madison Heights hospital to Trillium Health Care Management will turn the Dequindre Road campus into an inpatient behavioral-health center and, according to a vendor notice, will wipe out 114 contractor positions tied to day-to-day operations. Henry Ford says the facility's emergency department will stay open around the clock and will continue to be staffed by its own clinicians, while inpatient and surgical services head to the system's Warren campus about five miles away. Local officials and providers are framing the move as a way to boost psychiatric capacity even as affected workers are left staring down an uncertain few months.
In a Feb. 5 press release, Henry Ford Health said it has transferred the property at 27351 Dequindre Road to Warren-based Trillium, which plans to renovate the site into a 75-bed inpatient behavioral health hospital and begin work as early as this spring. Under the announcement, Trillium will own, operate and staff the behavioral unit, while Henry Ford will lease back and continue to staff the existing 24-hour emergency department. Renovations are expected to take about a year, and Henry Ford says team members at Madison Heights will transfer to other locations in the system during the transition period.
Outside vendors are absorbing the immediate hit. Compass Group USA filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification stating that its contract at the Madison Heights account will end and that it will not keep 114 employees at the site, according to Crain's Detroit. The WARN lists an effective termination date of April 6, and, as reported from the filing, covers housekeepers, cooks, food-service workers and staff assigned to patient observation and flow. Compass told regulators that when the account closes, its operations at the Madison Heights hospital will end entirely.
Compass Group is a major global player in catering and support services, and its full-year 2025 results show underlying revenue of about $46.1 billion. That scale underscores that the losses in Madison Heights stem from a local contract ending, not a broader corporate collapse. On the ground, though, more than a hundred people who have been running core services inside the hospital now face a tight countdown before the account shuts down.
Where care and staff will go
Henry Ford says it will move Madison Heights' inpatient and surgical services to Henry Ford Warren Hospital, consolidating medical care on that campus. The system says Madison Heights-based team members will be reassigned across Henry Ford facilities, and it does not expect to lay off its roughly 300 onsite employees. Trillium, for its part, will oversee the behavioral-health retrofit and has indicated plans to expand capacity beyond the initial 75 beds over time, according to the health system's announcement.
What workers can expect
Under the federal WARN Act, covered employers generally must give 60 days' notice to affected workers and state rapid-response units when a mass layoff or plant closing is on the way. The U.S. Department of Labor lays out those protections and employer obligations in its WARN guidance. In Michigan, the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity's Rapid Response team coordinates services for displaced workers, including referrals to unemployment benefits, short-term training and job placement help, and employers file WARN notices with the state to trigger that outreach.
Why behavioral beds matter
Hospital and public-health leaders say the conversion could chip away at a long-running shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds in Michigan and across the region. Reporting by FOX 2 Detroit and other outlets notes that the project could add dozens of beds to the local mental health continuum, while coverage from Bridge Michigan places the deal in the broader context of Henry Ford's growing behavioral-health footprint in southeast Michigan.
Trillium and Henry Ford say patient care in Madison Heights will continue during the handoff, and that more details on new programs, hiring and the construction timeline will roll out in the coming months. Affected workers are being urged to keep a close eye on notices from Compass Group, Henry Ford and Michigan Works!, and to contact the state's Rapid Response team for immediate support as the April deadline approaches.
