The sober living registry makes an unprecedented breakthrough – Orange County Register

Life is at stake. Action is needed. Fast.

“(T) here is an important need to protect victims who are currently being harmed by unscrupulous operators of illegal addiction treatment facilities and body brokers seeking to profiting from the victim’s addiction,” Orange County Executive Frank Kim told county supervisors in October 2018.

Predators prowl sober living homes and AA meetings, preying on recovering users who agree to perform unnecessary surgeries in exchange for money, Kim told the directors. supervisor. “Many of these patients/victims came from out of state and developed serious side effects from the surgery upon returning home,” he wrote.

Proposed Solution: A Revolution “Register to live sober,” requires that private addiction treatment providers in Orange County stay clean by publicly disclosing their monetization affiliates – sober homes, blood and urine labs, pharmacies, and others. similar place. It is touted as a first-of-its-kind bid to bring transparency to an industry rife with fraud and abuse.

Local leaders say, if the state doesn’t crack down, Orange County will. The county supervisors – save one person – accepted the idea. Hope is very high.

But today, more than three years later, the registry is envisioned as non-existent.

Information is power

The idea is that the registry will provide consumer-focused information, not medical advice.

“This is really designed as a starting point, for addiction treatment facilities to provide information about affiliated businesses,” said Tracy Hughes, associate district attorney, who has worked on a variety of occasions. about the new law, back in 2018.

“That is the model that skilled nursing facilities use. They must declare businesses in which they own 5% or more shares. We’re trying to protect people by being a little more transparent.”

The registry will also make it easier for law enforcement and the District Attorney to go after the bad guys. Businesses that do not honestly and fully register will face misdemeanors and fines of up to $1,000 and jail time of up to six months.

Kim told supervisors in 2018: “There is an important need to protect victims.

Yes, the state collects data on licensed establishments, but only the bare minimum – names, addresses, phone numbers and the like. But county officials say that’s not enough. “When you consider what this ordinance does, it goes well beyond the state registry,” said Supervisor Lisa Bartlett said at that time.

“It’s what gives our law enforcement the ability to act, and our DA to act, and keeps the bad players out of the field. The existing state registries didn’t go far enough. It doesn’t connect those dots for us.”

Orange County’s groundbreaking Sober Living Registry will empower officials to connect those dots.

“We need to act now,” Bartlett told his colleagues in 2018. “Everybody’s life is at risk.”

MIA

The problems are considered serious when Bartlett says that has not gone away.

In December 2021, when officials from the Justice Department announced criminal charges against 10 local rehab operators, they noted that Orange County has overtaken South Florida as the nation’s epicenter of rehabilitation crime.

Many drug and alcohol rehab in Orange County are still run by people with little or no medical qualifications. Many patients and their insurance plans are still brokered to the highest bidder. Many investors still own the invisible, interconnected network of rehab centers, sobriety homes, pharmacies and testing centers that attract patients and insurance money without interested in medical care.

Many rehabilitation patients still die unnecessarily.

Three years after saying a registry was needed to address those issues, county officials now say they are implementing the text of the law by Link to state licensing data — it was the flawed data that spurred Orange County’s effort in the first place.

“Is that enough? Is that enough?” asked Pauline Colvin, a spokeswoman for Bartlett. “Not in the opinion of the supervisor. She wants to do more with the registry.”

Only one other supervisor on the board at the end of 2018 is still in office – Andrew Do. Michelle Steel is currently a Congressman. The registry also did not weigh in, and Supervisors Doug Chafee and Don Wagner did not return requests for comment.

However, Supervisor Katrina Foley – who was recently elected to the board, is the leader Costa Mesa is in charge of successfully adapting sober living homes while the mayor of that city – said Orange County could do better.

“Improved coordination and transparency will help law enforcement and the Insurance Commissioner to enforce the law against unscrupulous operators,” Foley said by email. “These goals could be enhanced through a revised county registry, model city ordinance, or another policy initiative. All options are on the table. ”

Kim, the district’s chief executive then and now, said that his office takes direction from the Board of Supervisors.

Spokesperson Molly Nichelson said: “At this time, we are re-evaluating how to improve the integrity of the database so that it is useful to its intended audience.

The Southern California News Team has been asking about the status of the sober living registry for months. Officials did not respond.

After a public records request was filed over the summer to learn about the registry’s developments, documents began to flow out. – but they are mostly publicly available program reports, newsletters and SCNG private stories. Nothing sheds light on how the registry is built, or why officials decided to link to the state site after it was specifically determined to be insufficient, has yet to emerge.

County Attorney Massoud Shamel said that the OC Health Care Agency provided relevant documents it could find, but privileged communications between attorneys and clients would not be disclosed.

The District Attorney’s office – where the idea to register was born – said it had no written response, officials said.

Politics can get into the way the registry works. Or not.

The fight

Back in 2018, Todd Spitzer and Tony Rackauckas were locked in a particularly tough race for District Attorney.

Longtime DA Rackauckas proposed registration to the Orange County Board of Supervisors just weeks before the November election. Spitzer was one of those supervisors.

“Talking about a hoax close to an election,” Spitzer said at that time. “There’s only one reason to put that on the agenda and we all know what it is.”

Rackauckas denies any political motive, saying his office has been working on the issue for more than a year. Actions taken following SCNG’s ongoing investigation into cheat, sexual assault and death in the private addiction treatment industry.

The registry passed, over Spitzer’s objections. Rackauckas lost to Spitzer in the DA race. It is not clear How to proceed with registration? afterward.

Responsibility for it is unusual. The OC Health Care Agency will collect the information and the DA office will use that information to root out potential misconduct. Spitzer’s office says it has no records that meet SCNG’s request for a registry, despite the fact that the DA’s office is where it started; and declined to provide comment or further details for this story.

Rackauckas also did not return a request for comment.

Arecent state law requires licensed or certified treatment centers to disclose certain business relationships to public officials, but that information is not currently publicly available.

How can common invisible branches and financial relationships be so deadly? Rose and Allen Nelson of Santa Monica both know it all too well.

Their son, Brandon, was 26 when he arrived at what was supposed to be a flagship Sovereign Medical facility to treat a mental health crisis in 2018. But shortly after suffering a mental breakdown, Brandon was injured in an unlicensed “sober home mental health facility” operated by Sovereign.

He didn’t get his medication in time because his prescription was routed to a CEO-owned pharmacy, rather than a pharmacy that could fill up faster.

Abandoning his own devices, Brandon Nelson used sweatpants and a flamethrower on the ceiling to hang himself.