Situation
The Montana Children’s Home and Hospital d/b/a Shodair Children’s Hospital (“Shodair”) is the largest not-for-profit dedicated behavioral healthcare services provider in Helena, MT and served patients from 44 of Montana’s 56 counties in 2019.

Shodair offers a robust continuum of pediatric psychiatric care, including 30 inpatient psychiatric beds for children ages 3-18, a 42-bed psychiatric residential treatment facility, therapeutic group homes, outpatient, day treatment, and school-based services.

In addition, Shodair offers the State’s only comprehensive genetics program.

Objective
As part of its long-term growth strategy, Shodair worked with a team to design a new facility that would be suitable for the organization’s expanded pediatric psychiatric service lines and level of high-quality care. The new facility design includes 82 private rooms and an environment dedicated to safety, hope, and healing.

Shodair hired Matrix to serve as Financial and Municipal Advisor to develop and implement a Plan of Finance to pay for construction of the new hospital facility.

Solution
In assisting Shodair in developing the Plan of Finance, we worked with the Management Team to determine the appropriate level of debt to finance the construction, in addition to analyzing various different potential financing options.

We guided Shodair through the Rating Agency process with Standard & Poor’s and they achieved a BBB- rating with a Stable Outlook.

In conjunction with the working group, we developed a set of financial covenants and manageable continuing disclosure requirements.

Ultimately, through the Montana Facility Finance Authority, Shodair issued $32,735,000 of Series 2020A Bonds on its own credit, in addition to $20,000,000 of Series 2020B Bonds with the support of the Montana Board of Investments.

Overall, Shodair’s all-in cost of capital is 3.41% with a final maturity of 2050.