The county of Orange is taking back control of the Be Well OC campus in Orange, terminating its up to $67 million contract with Mind OC, the nonprofit that’s been responsible for overseeing mental health and recovery services, as well as property management, at the center.
The Be Well OC center was opened in 2021 to help community members battle mental illness and substance use through several crisis treatment programs, regardless of their ability to pay. The facility served more than 3,500 people in the last fiscal year, according to the OC Health Care Agency, mostly through its crisis stabilization unit for adults.
Programs at the center were previously overseen by the county, but Mind OC, doing business as Be Well, took over operations in 2022 after it came to light that under the county’s watch, a previous provider at the campus hired staffers who did not meet Medi-Cal certification to service clients.
Now, officials said the county will return to the original model, canceling its contract with Mind OC effective Sept. 30. Subcontractors Exodus Recovery Inc. and HealthRight 360, which have been providing the services available at the center, will now report directly to the county, while Mind OC will continue to manage the physical property in Orange.
The OC Board of Supervisors, at its Tuesday, Sept. 10, meeting approved new nearly three-year contracts with Exodus and HealthRight for up to $42 million and $48 million, respectively.
Mind OC leaders said they feel as though the county “pulled the rug from under them,” adding they are concerned about services being lost or reduced. OC Health Care Agency Director Veronica Kelley said the county ended the contract out of “convenience” and to go in a different direction and that there should be no disruption in services.
Mind OC has another up to $95 million contract with the county for the 22-acre Be Well OC campus under construction in Irvine; no changes to that contract have been proposed following the termination of Mind OC’s agreement in Orange, officials said.
An audit, first reported by the LAist, identified 38 deficiencies in the management of the services provided at Be Well OC in Orange, including inadequate staffing, missing proof of training, duplicate billing and more.
Additionally, the audit reported that Mind OC failed to meet its contract obligation of bringing in private insurance clients.
“The focus was on public and private. There has to be commercial dollars at the table, too. That allows us to provide all of these different sort of services,” Kelley said. “We were requiring 25% of the folks being served there be from commercial insurance … and it ended up being 2%. That’s not sufficient.”
Mind OC officials said no other provider was held to the same standard of bringing in private insurance clients, but that it is a model they believed in and were making progress in securing commercial contracts.
“Those contracts take time to implement,” Kayla Sotelo, director of clinical integration at Be Well OC, said. “It takes years sometimes to secure those and because of our experience in this space, we were making rapid movement on securing those contracts. I think the county … pulled the rug out from underneath us before we actually got to allow this vision to come to life.”
Kelley said she found the number of deficiencies in the audit report concerning.
“Normal is four to six deficiencies,” Kelley said. “I think I was more concerned that Mind OC might not have a good handle on how a public entity is supposed to deliver services, so that has ramifications for our providers, for the county, as well as for the people receiving the service.”
Phil Franks, CEO at Mind OC, said prior to the audit, the group was already working with providers to address areas that needed improvement.
“We’ve been working with them hand-in-hand on all their policies, their procedures, their staffing, documenting, all the way, all the good things and the things that need to be corrected,” Franks said. “I just want to make clear that none of this had to do with the actual delivery of healthcare. It was administrative audits of our clinical providers.”
He added, “(There were) no real surprises. We identified those. We corrected them. We provided all our corrections back to the county in the time that they asked us to do it, and it’s done. It’s normal course of business in health care.”
What did come as a surprise is the county’s decision to terminate its contract with Mind OC, Franks said. The nonprofit was under the impression that it would transition to a service provider role after it was informed that Exodus would not renew its contract, Franks said.
In an Aug. 16 email to the OC Board of Supervisors, acting county CEO Michelle Aguirre updated the board on Mind OC’s transition to provider. Franks was included in the correspondence, as well as Kelley and Blair Contratto, chief strategy officer at Be Well OC. Franks provided the email to The Orange County Register.
“While there will be a smooth transition from Exodus to Mind OC for delivery of Crisis Stabilization services with only a one-day break in services, the licensing requirements associated with the Crisis Residential Program will require a longer break in services,” Aguirre wrote in her email to supervisors. “Mind OC has submitted the application for licensing and is waiting to hear back. Most of the Exodus staff are staying on with Mind OC and will continue to provide services.”
The email also said a corrective action plan would be issued related to deficiencies identified in the audit.
But last week, Kelley said Mind OC “is not a provider in this space.”
“Exodus has decades of experience working in this space and was our provider on the campus prior to Mind OC becoming the management services organization,” she said, adding that Exodus agreed to remain on campus contracting directly with the county.
Franks raised his concerns that people hired by Mind OC, including Exodus employees who were staying at Be Well following the provider’s announced exit, could lose their jobs. And, as a result of that, staffing shortages would impact the services at Be Well OC, he said.
“We’re going to have to close our navigation center. We’re going to have to close our call center, which has only been up and operational for three months. We’re going to close the sobering center,” Contratto said. “Not only will those services come to an end, but we’re going to have to let really great people go that we’ve worked hard to recruit to deliver the service.”
Kelley said the staff hired by Mind OC from the current provider, Exodus, can remain with Exodus if they choose under the new contract with the county.
There will be no disruption in services at Be Well OC, Kelley said. In fact, the county will be helping the providers bring additional services online, she added.
“The county is going to move forward, and we will monitor the contracts there. The contractors have agreed to stay, and so they’ll continue to provide their services,” Kelley said. “There will not be any disruption. In fact, we probably will have more services available.”
Gary McCoy, vice president of policy and public affairs at HealthRight 360, said the group had a good working relationship with Mind OC, but with the county trying out this new management model, there were bound to be hiccups.
“When you’re trying to operate with the county and work on addressing solutions with a contractor, it can make communication a little bit challenging,” McCoy said last week. “I know that the county does not want to be in a place where they’re not able to provide services to folks who need them the most. Those conversations have been happening pretty significantly this week to ensure that there’s no sort of lagging in services and things can move forward.”
