Over the last fifteen years, Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches, BHOPB, founder Don Mullaney has built his South Florida treatment center into one of the most thriving facilities in the nation. As the operation has grown, one key focus has always been on adding treatment services that offered some benefit from a continuum of care perspective.

“We are always looking at quality here, and having programs that make sense from a continuum of care perspective is always the best way to go because it’s one of the best ways to boost outcomes,” says Mullaney. “But continually adding programs that move out along the continuum of care also makes a great deal of sense from a business standpoint because you’re keeping the revenue stream in-house by not referring out. And by not referring out you can also better control the quality.”

And so it was within this context, within the context of extending its continuum of care, that BHOPB recently opened a new facility, a program that adds an affordable care element

element to BHOPB’s stable of product offerings, which range from detox, through primary care to outpatient and supportive sober living communities. From planning to inception took three years, with the new 40 bed affordable care program opening its doors just a couple of months ago. So far, about 10 beds have been filled in the affordable care program, a level that Mullaney is working to increase. “So far, all of our clients in the new program are ones that we have moved to a longer-term, extended level of care out of our primary program,” Mullaney said. “We are now looking at ways we can move new clients into the program through our primary marketing efforts.”

BHOPB has one of the most high-powered marketing operations of any treatment center operation in the nation, with a call center located in the Philadelphia area that takes inbound from all over the country. What Mullaney and his COO Mike Slinskey are working out right now is how to get new clients into the affordable care program without cannibalizing the marketing efforts of its higher-end primary care business. “The solution we are working on here, what we think we may do, is open up a distinct marketing channel for the affordable care program,” said Mullaney, adding that for the first time BHOPB is also exploring developing referral relationships with managed care companies, something Mullaney has not focused much attention on until now.

At $6,000 for 30 days, BHOPB’s affordable care option is among the lowest priced offerings in the nation, on a par with affordable care leader The Right Step of Houston, until that center raised its rates for 30 days of primary care by 20 percent early this year.

The Right Step has been one the treatment center industry’s top beneficiaries of a growing trend in the business toward offering more affordable care options. CEO George Joseph is on the cutting-edge of the trend, which has seen substantial numbers of affordable facilities open in virtually every region that the addiction industry has a strong presence, including Southern California, Minnesota, South Florida and even in the birthplace of high-end treatment, Arizona.

If Mullaney can imitate what Joseph has been able to do, then BHOPB’s affordable care initiative certainly has a bright future indeed. Since taking over the struggling Right Step in 1993, Joseph has grown the business phenomenally. In 1993, The Right Step had $300,000 in revenues and one run-down facility in Houston, with the business last year registering $10 million in revenues from a facility in Louisiana, multiple locations in Houston and a brand new 124 bed facility outside of Dallas. By the end of this year, Joseph expects to have several facilities open in the Austin/San Antonio corridor.

But for now Mullaney is just concentrating on filling his existing beds at the new affordable care program. “This is something we have known for quite some time there was need for,” he said. “We have put some chronic relapsers from our primary care into the new facility and we will be building the marketing effort from here on out.”

Once BHOPB’s marketing machine gets behind the Center for Alcohol and Drug Studies, CAP, the formal name of the new affordable care offering, there can be little doubt that beds are likely to fill up relatively quickly. Treatment Magazine has found in its research that the demand for affordable care has been surging, which, when combined with BHOBP’s marketing prowess, is likely to prove to be an unbeatable combination.

Certainly, the BHOPB formula has proven very successful in the past. Over the past 15 years, Mullaney has built BHOBP into a thriving, and very profitable, $15 million a year business, a business that has also benefitted strongly from the doubling and tripling of real estate prices in South Florida over the last decade. At 107, BHOPB’s census is the highest it’s ever been, according to Mullaney, a strength that is also being seen by other treatment centers across South Florida, some of which are also reporting their highest census counts ever. And while Mullaney is glad of the business success, he says that’s not why he’s in the treatment business: “There is more than a little Mother Theresa in me,” he said. EL