Howard Co., drug treatment provider reach $3 million deal
Company to build inpatient addiction facility, with spots reserved for area residents
Howard County has reached a $3 million deal with a private company to build an inpatient drug treatment center there with beds reserved for county residents.
In what Howard officials say is a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership, the county will pay Delphi Behavioral Health Group $750,000 annually for four years to build a treatment center with shorter-term detoxification services and month-long residential treatment options. The money will be a grant awarded in the county’s operating budget, said Carl DeLorenzo, director of policy and programs for County Executive Calvin Ball.
In return, for the length of the deal Delphi will be required to admit an average of nine patients a month from Howard County, or 108 total residents for the year. And Delphi has agreed to make 35% of its beds available to people either on or eligible for public insurance — such as Medicaid or Medicare.
But a competitor is protesting the deal, arguing it should have had a chance to bid on the proposal. Officials with Owings Mills-based Amatus Health contend the county avoided bringing the project before the County Council and out to bid, which might have yielded a better deal.
The Howard treatment center would be the second in the state for Delphi, a relatively new addiction treatment provider founded in 2016 that has 15 facilities spread across the East Coast and California.
While Delphi has had to allocate beds for Medicaid-eligible patients at previous facilities — such as when it applied for state approval for a Linthicum facility called Maryland House Detox — Howard County officials say tying public funding to the requirement to treat county residents is a first in the state. The county has been discussing the idea since at least last year.
According to the state Department of Health, Delphi’s center would be the first in Howard County to offer either detoxification treatment or high-intensity residential services. Delphi has not selected a site for the center.
The county hopes the center will be completed within two years. Although the county just announced a 25.5% decrease in opioid overdoses in 2018 compared with 2017, officials stress that Howard is largely underserved for a county that has seen more than 200 opioid overdoses, fatal and non-fatal, in each of the past two
years.
The Howard County agreement requires Delphi to admit a county resident to the new facility within 24 hours once they are referred for treatment.
David Stup, director of corporate business development for Delphi, said the grant would help with initial startup and building costs, but also offset lost revenue the center would incur when treating people on Medicaid.
“At the end of the day, the services that they’re prepaying for go to offset all of the costs associated with operating a facility, including the startup costs to get the door open,” Stup said. “We have come together and decided that we want to be able to see patients of all income levels in Howard County.”
But another addiction treatment provider said the county should have sought bids on the facility.
Mike Silverman, chief operating officer of Amatus Health, said his company was not aware the county was looking to partner with a private addiction treatment center. Amatus operates addiction treatment centers on the East Coast and in Ohio.
“As a provider that is local to the state and very capable of doing the same types of things … we 1000% would’ve been very open to the bidding process,” said Silverman, pointing to the fact that Amatus recently opened a facility in Hagerstown that exclusively serves Medicaid and Medicare patients.
Mike Gimbel, the former Baltimore County “drug czar” and now a consultant for Amatus, criticized county offi
“At the end of the day, the services that they’re prepaying for go to offset all of the costs associated with operating a facility, including the startup costs to get the door open.”