After a delirious Henry Lehr bolted from a licensed Newport Beach detox in the middle of an August night and broke into a neighbor’s house, he was shot and killed by the frightened homeowner inside.
Frankie Taylor’s parents can’t fathom how he got the fentanyl that killed him in July, while he was supposed to be protected at a licensed addiction treatment program in Anaheim.
Dean Rea’s mom doesn’t understand why he was released in April from a licensed detox in Palm Springs and sent straight to a sober living home, skipping the usual step of supervised, in-residence treatment, according to a lawsuit. Rea overdosed in his room, was revived, and kicked out, without anyone alerting his family to the crisis. He died later that day behind a gas station.
Deaths like these aren’t uncommon in the rehab industry, where lax regulation runs head-on with the high-stakes illness of addiction.
Many in Sacramento are pushing — yet again — to change that. Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, and other lawmakers have been battling to reform California’s troubled private, for-profit addiction treatment industry for years, and have passed many new laws to that end. But on the street little seems to have changed. Petrie-Norris plans to hold official feet to the fire at an Accountability and Administrative Review Hearing at 11 a.m. Monday, Dec. 13.
“It came to a head with the terrible tragedy at the Gratitude Lodge facility,” Petrie-Norris said, referencing the detox Lehr left before being shot in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 26. “That is really the worst possible nightmare outcome, but sadly, one that was not unanticipated. There were numerous complaints about this facility and it did not come as a surprise to the folks who had been living next door. I’ve had many, many neighbors describe a tragedy waiting to happen.”
Monday’s hearing aims to put pressure on officials from the California Department of Health Care Services, the agency that oversees rehab operators. The hearing also is slated to include testimony from the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the Hazelden Betty Ford Center on how to raise standards at treatment facilities in California, and testimony from local officials detailing other safety incidents at licensed facilities in their jurisdictions.
The public is encouraged to share experiences, concerns and questions via the committee’s “position letter portal” at https://calegislation.lc.ca.gov/Advocates/. The hearing will stream live on the committee’s web site at https://aaar.assembly.ca.gov/hearings.
“We have an ambitious set of goals for this hearing. I want DHCS to step up enforcement of treatment facilities in my district and in the state,” said Petrie-Norris. “The goal is to respond to the many questions and intense frustration I’m hearing from my constituents and patient advocates, and to bring urgency and focus to the issue for DHCS.”
People have been living in “a nightmare situation” compounded by a lack of responsiveness to their concerns from state and local government agencies, she said. Complaints to DHCS about licensed facilities fall into a bureaucratic black hole, and people don’t hear back for weeks or months. “It’s unacceptable,” Petrie-Norris said. “It’s akin to stonewalling.”
Officials from DHCS said late Wednesday that they are working on a response. There are about 1,800 licensed addiction treatment centers in California — the vast majority of them in Southern California — while all of DHCS’s licensing personnel are in Sacramento.
In addition to stepping up enforcement, DHCS needs to include a local enforcement arm, Petrie-Norris said. Earlier attempts to move personnel to the heart of the Rehab Rivera to more quickly respond to problems were blocked.
After the Southern California News Group began chronicling disturbing reports of death, sexual assault, drug abuse and paying for patients inside California’s loosely regulated addiction treatment industry in 2017, many laws have been passed to curb abuses. There also have been hearings and task forces, arrests and imprisonments.
There also have been more deaths, as the basic model of the for-profit treatment system in California remains unchanged.
Repeated attempts to require all addiction treatment facilities to be licensed — something that is not now the case — have met a wall of opposition, but legislators continue to push on that front.
“We need to fundamentally and dramatically raise the standards in this industry,” Petrie-Norris said. “A lot of the operators running the smaller, under-the-radar facilities, they’re frankly not worried about providing quality treatment, and not worried about protecting patients in recovery. It’s that exploitation that’s really at the heart of the disastrous impact this is having on people who need help and are desperate.”
Source: Orange County Register
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