Olaf Growald
Dr. Brian Dixon’s early inspirations for becoming a physician: “I grew up watching Doogie Howser and Beverly Crusher on ‘Star Trek.’” Dixon didn’t know he wanted to be a psychiatrist until he did his clinical rotation in psychiatry while in medical school. “You get more time to sit with people and figure things out,” he says. “I enjoy kids and working with families.” Dixon went out on his own after his second job, at Cook Children’s in Fort Worth. Vocal of mental health as an aspect of social justice and critical to a holistic health care approach, Dixon argues mental health gets the short shrift. He doesn’t accept insurance. “Insurance keeps me from doing my job. Lots of insurance companies don’t pay for therapy being done by a psychiatrist.” He’s working on an unusual idea that’s raised his profile: developing a mental health medical office complex, abutting the city’s Glenwood Park in the Southeast Fort Worth neighborhood of Historic Southside, where he lives. In 2019, Dixon joined the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Fort Worth Accelerator; the Accelerator is designed to help guide members to their first $1 million in annual revenue.
Finding office space as a mental health pro Because of patient privacy, “we have to have places designed that minimize the risk of information getting out there. Soundproofing, secure Wi-Fi. We can’t book 40 patients, and we want our patients to feel this is a safe space to be. It makes finding space really hard.”
Managing through COVID-19 “We’ve never had a year of losses. 2020 was a year of levelling off. We switched to online. We bought a Zoom health care account for $200 a month. Patients love it, especially our established patients. New patients are a lot harder. As soon as we could go back to the office, we switched to in-person. Now it’s about 50/50.”
Why Mindful? “There’s a movement called Mindfulness, where you accept the moment as it is and don’t pass judgment on the moment.”
The park idea “We need to have a physical representation of our commitment. There’s more research coming out, about [the benefit of] getting into nature. We want people getting out, walking in nature. We’re in a ZIP code [76104] that has the lowest life expectancy in Texas.”
The developer “We found a developer in Alabama who does medical office buildings and inpatient behavioral hospitals. We priced this out somewhere between $20 million and $25 million to do the full concept.”
Talks with the city “The last answer was talk to the parks department. The last answer I got from parks was trying to preserve parks space. It won’t work anywhere else. To have protected space beside the development is very important. I want it to be a boon and benefit to that neighborhood.”
What he’s learned in the EO Accelerator “I didn’t have a grasp of how to manage people or how to build really transparent processes. I need any coaching I can find. We have nine employees — four other psychiatrists and four other administrative staff. This year, we took those administrative staff and spun them off into a separate company. The goal is there are lots of therapists who would love to have a private practice. What we can offer is turnkey service. If you want to truly scale, that’s the model you need to use.”