Phoenix House is the latest casualty in an escalating funding crisis for Texas treatment centers as the state struggles with startling increases in overdose deaths, particularly among young people.
After decades of treating low-income Texans fighting substance addiction, Phoenix House Texas is closing down all six of its outpatient clinics and its last residential treatment center for teens this week because they can no longer count on the state to help fund them, the nonprofit group’s director said Tuesday.
That Phoenix House center was also the only residential treatment for drug-addicted unfunded youth in Central Texas, Dutton said. Parker said his agency offers resources for youth ages 13-17 who need treatment in a region that has no options, coordinating placement and increasing access through telehealth options.
Youth180, a nonprofit based in Dallas that provides prevention, intervention, and outpatient treatment services to adolescents and their families, are looking into adding residential treatment beds following the closure of Phoenix House, officials there said. The nearest residential treatment center for girls is two hours away, an impossible trip for the low-income family, Stitt said.Stitt said since Phoenix House started winding down its services and word has spread about their closure of programming, their organization has seen their referrals double in a week.
It has gotten more difficult to staff them because it’s hard to pay them competitive rates, providers say. In fact, one provider in Victoria told HHSC officials at that hearing that staff had taken a pay cut in recent years to keep the lights on in their facility. Dutton’s costs have gone up more than 30% in the past decade.Meanwhile, the state allotments have not met the rate of inflation, Dutton said. In 2014, the state reimbursement to residential treatment centers was $161 per patient, per day. Today, that rate has risen to $168.49 per patient, per day, he said.
Absent that, substance abuse treatment providers want that the entire amount allocated to them through the block grants be released to them at once, instead of in annual increments, so that they could access that money when they need it most. Last year, HHSC staff recommended that residential centers get an even bigger raise, but the request was declined and there was no change, he said.During the hearing two weeks ago, several providers implored HHSC officials to consider how the state would be affected if treatment centers were to shut down.
That diversification mostly includes private fundraising, but also other public funds from Dallas County through the American Rescue Plan Act, which will go away in 2025. “The unsustainably low reimbursement rates that HHSC pays to providers who treat uninsured patients is a longstanding issue in Texas,” she said.
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