OK, California: We’re tired of waiting and will post your addiction center reports ourselves

Distraught, outraged, infuriated, aghast — we can’t settle on the right adjective here.

We just got off the phone with a man whose brother was lured from afar to California for addiction treatment in May. This “treatment” ended with the man’s death in a sober living home in Los Angeles in June. No one notified his family for more than a week, and the devastating news didn’t come from the sober home affiliated with the treatment center — it came, instead, from the coroner’s office.

We’ll be telling you more about this tragedy soon — one that repeats itself over and over despite new laws and regulations aiming to raise the bar on the private-pay, insurance money-fueled segment of the addiction treatment industry in California. But in the meantime, it seemed more than idle coincidence that we retrieved 56 (heavily redacted) death reports from the state agency that licenses addiction treatment centers on Thursday, July 11. We had asked for this information months ago, and it was released in late June.

The most recent death reports are for incidents from 2023, and many of them are older. It takes quite a lot of time for the Department of Health Care Services — which licenses and regulates addiction treatment in California — to probe and close these investigations. And even when 2024 is done, this man’s death won’t show up in the official tally. Why? Because sober homes are regulated by no one. They’re officially families, not businesses. Even if they’re affiliated with licensed treatment centers.

So suffice to say these 56 new death reports represent just a portion of the total carnage out there. People are dying in San Juan Capistrano, Mission Viejo, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Santa Ana and Tustin; in Los Angeles, Inglewood, North Hollywood and Venice; in Pasadena, Temecula, San Bernardino and Palm Desert; in San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and East Palo Alto. Everywhere.

We wonder. If people seeking treatment had this information in real time — even as heavily redacted as it is — might it give them pause? Might it make them ask more questions? Might they consider a public rather than private program (public programs are more well-regulated, with quality bars that must be hit) closer to home instead of “sober vacations” far away?

Maddening as the document redactions are — “substantiated deficiencies” are often whited out, as are dates and details that might let one figure out what actually happened and who actually died — the information is still valuable.

“On —- was pronounced dead onsite in —- room at Program,” one of the new ones reads. “According to Program policy, Program failed to provide —- detoxification after returning from the —-….The deficiency is substantiated based on the following: —-.”

Another said, “Program failed to —- when transferred to Program. Program failed to conduct wellness checks on —- pursuant to its policies and procedures. Program’s approved health care practitioner is providing services beyond IMS (incidental medical services). IMS certification form is not completed by Program’s approved health care practitioner. Program is utilizing non-DHCS approved health care practitioners…. Program is operating as an integral facility without integral licensure. Program violated —-.”

It’s a bit like deciphering hieroglyphics, but shouldn’t everyone looking at treatment in California know at least some of what the state of California knows? We most certainly think so. And at least officially, the state agrees.

The Department of Health Care Services promised to provide online access to its public records on licensed treatment centers via a public dashboard years ago. It was supposed to be done last year. Then, this summer. Now, we’re told, it will be up by the end of the year.

As we’ve noted before, this is not exactly groundbreaking stuff. The California Department of Social Services, which licenses and inspects group homes for disabled folks and kiddie daycares, has been posting inspection and complaint reports online for many years. It has many of the same privacy concerns to navigate as DHCS does. It manages nonetheless.

So, we throw up our hands. We’re tired of waiting.

On April 1, we filed a public records request with DHCS. “We would like copies of all public documents (licensing files, inspection reports, correspondence etc.) for all licensed and certified addiction treatment facilities currently active in the state,” we wrote.

This elicited a somewhat cross response from officials. There are currently 1,799 active substance use disorder facilities, they said.

Yes, we know, we said.

Could we further clarify or narrow our request?

Not exactly — but we settled on a county-by-county approach, starting with Orange, ground zero of the Rehab Riviera. We’re still waiting for documents. But we’ll be posting them.

We’re working on a more systematic analysis of the death reports, and we’ll be posting those, too.

We’re talking about life-and-death health care here, and it’s crazy that we have to do this.

May the dead finally rest in peace.