For years, Orange County supervisors have touted their Be Well program as their signature response to mental health.
But last week, a different narrative came into focus with county officials abruptly announcing plans to pull millions of dollars in funding at the end of September after an audit found systemic failures in their program like failing to properly train staff and correctly bill the county.
That audit comes after officials in Anaheim and Newport Beach publicly questioned the effectiveness of Be Well’s street health program for months, asking how much impact the millions they’ve spent for help on homelessness has had.
Be Well’s leadership said the move came as a surprise, pointing to emails from interim county CEO Michelle Aguirre and county Behavioral Health Director Ian Kemmer saying they looked forward to continuing work with the nonprofit.
“So many worked so hard to get us to where we are today, and I look forward to working with you to ensure continued delivery and sustainability of these critical services,” Aguirre said in her email to health care agency chief Veronica Kelley and Be Well’s CEO Phillip Franks on August 16.
In an interview with Voice of OC, Franks said the shift would require laying off over 100 employees and would negatively impact mental health operations countywide, calling it a “complete surprise.”
“It is normal process to do audits on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in healthcare,” Franks said. “That’s normal due process. In healthcare, you find things, you fix them, and you make sure you improve. Rarely, if ever, it gets to the point of a termination.”
It marks the second time in two months that county supervisors are grappling with their spending on public health after county lawyers sued another nonprofit, alleging they embezzled over $10 million primarily meant to feed the elderly and instead bought houses with it.
[Read: OC Staff Raised Early Concerns on Viet America Society Contract That Saw FBI Raids]
Since it launched in 2017, county leaders have praised the Be Well campus approach managed by Mind OC, the nonprofit that oversees the program, saying it’s an example of how a public-private partnership can get more done than government alone.
“Orange County is a place where community members can find support, resources, and hope on their journey to mental health wellness,” said Supervisor Don Wagner in a June statement. “Our expanding partnership with the Be Well campuses will provide best-in-class clinical services for mental health and substance use for children, adolescents, adults and families.”
Supervisor Doug Chaffee also praised the county’s model as the first of its kind in the same statement.
“Orange County is leading the way in Behavioral Health with the expansion of Be Well OC,” Chaffee said. “We are breaking down barriers towards accessing mental health services and serving as a model for other counties to build upon.”
But a new audit from the Orange County Health Care Agency paints a different picture.
The audit, which was first reported on by LAist, highlights over three dozen problems with Be Well’s operations, including failing to hire qualified contractors, failing to answer hotline calls, double billing for services and failing to seek out more funding options.
For their 24 hour crisis stabilization unit, county auditors reported that Be Well’s contractor regularly failed to answer the phone or told callers that there were no staff available “due to breaks or staffing shortages.”
“This issue has been addressed with Mind OC Staff since it was first reported,” auditors wrote. At the time of this review, the issue remains unresolved.”
Last year, Be Well was also forced to shut down its drug treatment program at the Orange campus after county staff found their contractor failed to properly oversee the program.
[Read: Fraud Concerns Preceded Shutdown of Drug Treatment Program at OC’s Be Well Mental Health Campus]
Those problems came as Be Well was handling nearly $70 million a year, according to their tax disclosures, and spending over $14 million a year on their overhead for staffing, insurance and other expenses in 2022 according to those same disclosures.
It also comes as Be Well’s leadership has dramatically changed, with a new CEO, chief strategy officer and new chief operating officer in the past year.
Franks, Be Well’s CEO who joined the organization last October, said while the audit found administrative issues, they were all issues the county was already aware of and that no patient care had been impacted.
“That’s not our expertise,” Franks said. “We’re not experts in county monitoring. We’re clinical experts. We wanted to lessen the burden on the financial piece of it by becoming the provider of care for the crisis services, and that was the goal all the way up until last week.”
While the county is removing Be Well from most of its work at the county’s campus in Orange, they’re currently still working with them on a second campus in Irvine at the Great Park.
OC Cities Raise Questions Over Be Well
Be Well is also still working with the cities of Anaheim, Irvine, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and Westminster on their street health programs, but some city leaders have been raising questions about that program.
Newport Beach leaders canned their contract for street services with Be Well last week, saying the nonprofit had failed to deliver its promised services intervening with the homeless and others experiencing mental health crises.
[Read: Newport Beach Bolsters Anti-Camping Law After Supreme Court Ruling]
Newport Beach Councilwoman Laura Kleinman said despite Be Well’s eagerness to collaborate, they weren’t able to deliver necessary services.
“We had really high hopes for the little blue ‘hope starts here’ van that had promised to address mental health and substance abuse issues pervasive in this population,” Kleiman said. “Unfortunately, by their own admission, Be Well simply can’t do, not just what we need them to do, but what their contract required them to do.”
Councilman Joe Stapleton agreed with her.
“As it comes to Be Well, it’s an approach I think has worked. It hasn’t worked well enough. It hasn’t worked fast enough,” Stapleton said. “I would be supportive of not continuing to move forward in a new contract with them.”
Anaheim officials – who regularly grapple with homeless outreach efforts – began raising questions in June over Be Well’s effectiveness when city council members increased the city’s contract with the mental health services provider to $1.7 million to run through September.
“I do see a lot of people who have needs in the community and they’re not being addressed,“ Anaheim Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava said during the June 18 council meeting.
City officials there said CalOptima street medicine teams could be an alternative to Be Well.
Rubalcava said city officials need to “figure out who the right partner is and hold them accountable because it is a lot of money we’re investing.”
And Mayor Ashleigh Aitken questioned if Be Well’s staff are qualified to do the job.
“We need people that are trained and licensed,” Aitken said at the June 18 meeting. “This is the most difficult population that we have out on the streets – volunteers or lived experience is not going to give us the diagnosis and long term planning and long term care we need.”
Officials told staff to start talking with CalOptima in an effort to replace Be Well’s homeless outreach teams when the contract expires.
[Read: CalOptima Unveils Medical Care Street Teams for Homeless, Commits $100 Million to Homeless Services]
“The landscape in this area is changing rapidly,” Deputy City Manager Greg Garcia said. ”Street medicine is coming from CalOptima – that’s a game changer.”
Irvine City Manager Oliver Chi said that while Be Well has done a good job in Irvine, the city is already planning on setting up its own mental health crisis program instead of using theirs.
“We’re likely going to transition away at some point,” Chi said in a Wednesday interview. “As we’ve been thinking through what we need here in Irvine, we’re thinking of something a little more integrated into the police department.”
Franks said Be Well isn’t equipped to take homeless people off the streets, and that all they can do through their mobile program is offer services to homeless people interested in accepting them, adding they were meeting with cities to figure out how they could better help them.
“A lot of the cities have gotten to the point where their homeless crisis has overwhelmed other things they want to really solve their homeless crisis,” Franks said. “Be Well Mobile is not a homeless provider.”
Editor’s Note: Voice of OC board member Bill Taormina also serves on the board of directors for Mind OC.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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