As Addiction Deaths Surge Profit-Driven Rehab Industry Faces Severe Ethical Crisis
This 2017 photo shows a slogan is on the storefront of Journey, a former substance abuse treatment center, gamingdeals.shop in Lake Worth, Fla. Now closed, Sales it was one of two centers owned by Kenneth Chatman, who is now serving a 27-year federal prison sentence for health care fraud and money laundering convictions. This 2017 photo shows a slogan is on the storefront of Journey, a former substance abuse treatment center, in Lake Worth, Fla. Now closed, it was one of two centers owned by Kenneth Chatman, who is now serving a 27-year federal prison sentence for health care fraud and money laundering convictions. As the nation's addiction crisis deepened, Tamara Beetham, who studies health policy at Yale University, set out to answer a simple question: What happens when people try to get help? Her first step was to create a kind of undercover identity - a 26-year-old, beauty using heroin daily. Using this fictional persona, her research team called more than 600 residential treatment centers all over the country.
For people suffering addiction, this can be a life-or-death moment. Studies show that getting high-quality medical care can make a huge difference, leading to long-term recovery and a healthier life. So what Beetham's team found was troubling. Listening to the news can feel like a journey. But 1A guides you beyond the headlines - and cuts through the noise. According to their peer-reviewed study, published in the February issue of the journal Health Affairs, many for-profit rehab programs charged inflated fees and used misleading sales practices to attract patients without evaluating their actual medical needs. It turns out the people answering the phones at for-profit rehab programs when Beetham's team called typically weren't nurses or therapists. They often weren't asking medical questions at all. They were sales people using aggressive marketing tactics to get credit card numbers while demanding a lot of cash up front, averaging more than $17,000. Researchers found the sales pitch at for-profit clinics often focused on things that have nothing to do with medical care.
Beetham's researchers, according to notes of the conversation provided to NPR. Despite the high price tag, however, Beetham's team found most programs don't provide evidence-based care using medications such as buprenorphine and methadone. These findings, based on data collected in 2019, come as far more Americans are dying from drug overdoses during the pandemic - more than 81,000 last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts interviewed by NPR say this problem - residential rehab programs operating more like luxury spas or used car dealerships - is an unintended result of the Affordable Care Act. A decade ago, the ACA mandated that private insurance programs cover people suffering addiction. It's a widely praised reform that helped many patients find healthcare as the opioid epidemic exploded. But it created a kind of addiction gold rush, says Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Palm Beach County, Fla. So many for-profit rehab clinics and "sober homes" opened in his area of South Florida that Aronberg created a task force to investigate allegations of corruption, insurance fraud and other abuses.
Assistant State Attorney Alan Johnson, who leads the task force. Johnson described a case he investigated in 2017 in which parents sent their daughter to South Florida for treatment. Experts say there are many good recovery programs, but families and desperate patients trying to find help say it's often impossible to tell legitimate rehab programs from unethical ones. Ryan Hampton, who spent years trying to get help for his addiction to prescription opioids and heroin. He said his family "was preyed upon by unscrupulous treatment centers." He said they borrowed money and maxed out credit cards to pay his rehab bills. Hampton has been in recovery for six years and works now as an advocate for Sales people with substance use disorders. He said much of the industry is still shaped by two forces: greed and fear. In recent years, some states including Florida have tightened regulations on rehab programs, but rules and requirements vary wildly from state to state. C ontent has been gen erated by GSA Content G en erator Demov er sion.
Academics, recovery advocates and government officials told NPR that roughly half the states provide little or no meaningful oversight over the industry. The federal government, games meanwhile, plays little role setting or enforcing professional or medical guidelines for residential addiction care. Many rehab programs are "accredited" by private companies that review their operations in exchange for a fee. But the Health Affairs study found many of those rehab programs still use hard-sell marketing practices. Dr. Paul Earley, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He said many care providers, along with advocacy groups, are working to improve and standardize addiction programs to be more science-based. But there's frustration over the pace of change. In 2019, a trade group called the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers published a report acknowledging "a severe ethical crisis" in the recovery field. Ethical standards at many rehab programs were so poor that the organization purged "numerous members of the association at considerable financial loss," according to the report.
