07/07/2009 - ATIN - A giant of the Florida addiction treatment business, Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches co-founder Don Mullaney, passed away yesterday after a courageous struggle with cancer. While many executives in the Florida market, where Mullaney had many friends and many whom he had mentored, expressed worries about Mullaney's appearance in recent months, Mullaney never let on about the difficulty or the pain of his battle. Cheerful and outgoing to the end,  Don Mullaney was interested most, as he had always been, in the well being of those around him.

Mullaney was the clinical driver behind the growth of Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches, BHOPB, which he founded as a tiny outpatient clinic in the late 1980s and which he helped grow into one of the two largest - The Watershed being the other - for-profit treatment enterprises in South Florida, with annual revenues now approaching $20M. A proud man who stood well over 6 feet tall, and barrrel-chested before the onset of his tragic and debilitating illness over a year ago, Mullaney was a "hail-well-met" type, quick with a laugh and a smile for his employees, whom he treated like his extended family and for whom he expressed the deepest concern in interviews with Treatment Magazine starting in 2004.

In the constant struggle between profit and quality of care, Mullaney always came down on the side of care quality for his clients. As an addict himself with numerous years in recovery, Mullaney took his recovery mission with the utmost seriousness. The Florida market giant expressed his opinion in numerous discussions with Treatment Magazine concerning the need to develop industrywide outcomes and research data in order to prove the case that treatment works and ensure continued funding into the industry from private insurance sources.

Consistant with his role as a pioneer in the industry, even as he struggled to stay well, Mullaney late last year opened  Sea Side Palm Beach, the first truly high-end addiction center in South Florida. Offering very individualistic, highly consumer friendly care, Mullaney's charm also played a key role in the pioneering new center's development.

Impeding the growth of high-end Malibu style care in Florida - which requires facility location to be in tony locales - has been virulent NIMBYism. This has meant that new facilities in Florida were either done on the "day/night " Florida model, of which Mullaney was a major early innovator, or centers have been located in quite institutionalized settings, such as ex-nursing or psychiatric facilities. Mullaney was one of the very few treatment entreprenuers to acquire appropriate zoning in a residential setting, using his considerable persuasiveness to convince the local municipality to grant  Sea Side Palm Beach key zoning.

Located on the famous A1A Altlantic Ocean highway in a full block square compound of new and renovated townhomes, Sea Side Palm Beach is likely destined to become among Florida's most valuable treatment properties.

Deep sadness has descended over BHOPB with their founder's passing. Says Mullaney's long time assistant Linda Broncatello: "I've been answering Don's phone all day, it's been very hard."

Newswire Staff

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