Dem Candidate Lobbies For Healthcare Company Found to ‘Put Profits Ahead of Children’s Safety’

The article has be updated to include comment from Jennifer Atlas. 

Jennifer Atlas advanced from the Democratic primary to face Republican incumbent Carrie Buck in the upcoming November election for Senate District 5, a swing district and a crucial seat for Nevada republicans to retain as they seek to prevent state democrats from having a veto-proof majority.

Atlas serves as a lobbyist in the state legislature representing a variety of clients, including Acadia Healthcare.

Acadia Healthcare operates in 39 states and boasts of over 250 behavioral health facilities in its portfolio. The for-profit healthcare giant operates multiple dependency and psychiatric treatment facilities in Nevada, including one located in Senate District 5.

The size of Acadia’s footprint in the behavioral healthcare field is extensive, as are the numerous controversies, investigations, and lawsuits that have plagued the company for over a decade.

Acadia Healthcare owns Highland Ridge Hospital in Midvale, Utah, a for-profit psychiatric facility that treats both adults and minors.

In 2023, Fox 13 News in Salt Lake City reported that Highland Ridge Hospital patients have been getting sexually assaulted for years, and employees say they were trained to keep it from police. The hospital was called a “rape hospital” after the Unified Police Department responded to more than 100 cases at the hospital since 2019. More than half of the reported cases were in relation to physical and sexual violence, with over 17 documented reports of sexual assault and 31 documented reports of assault.

Fox 13 reported that the hospital had its license revoked and replaced with a “conditional license,” at least three times since 2019. In April 2024, months after Fox 13’s initial reports, Acadia Healthcare made the decision to shut down Highland Ridge Hospital.

Yet, this isn’t the only controversy Acadia Healthcare has experienced over the years. 

In November 2023, the company paid $400 million to settle three cases filed against the company and former subsidiary Youth and Family Centered Services of New Mexico, including one regarding an affiliated foster parent who allegedly sexually abused a child. Their potential liability was perceived to be as high as roughly $1 billion.

One of Acadia’s facilities in New Mexico was forced to close amid egregious abuse allegations, multiple lawsuits and losing its certification from state regulators. This included staff members instigating “fight clubs” and the sexual abuse of young patients.

Acadia Healthcare’s Tampa Bay behavioral healthcare unit was under investigation for conspiring to hold patients unnecessarily to make more money. Since 2014, the unit “was cited 72 times for unsafe conditions and code violations, more than all but one other psychiatric hospital in Florida,” an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times found.

In West Virginia, Acadia had to pay $17 million settlement in what the U.S. Attorney’s office described as the “biggest healthcare fraud settlement in West Virginia history.”

Acadia Montana was found to have used drug injections as punishment for minor patients. This became the subject of an investigation by the United States Senate. The two-year investigation concluded last month and found that “residential treatment centers put profits ahead of children’s safety.”

NBC reported:

Children in residential treatment facilities run by some of the country’s largest behavioral health companies are at risk for sexual abuse, dangerous physical restraints and overmedication, problems compounded by weak oversight and a system that “optimizes profit over the wellbeing and safety of children,” a Senate committee reported Wednesday.

The companies that were investigated rely on per diem payments from Medicaid and other government sources to treat the young people in their custody, many of whom have developmental disabilities or are in foster care, but the companies often pack the facilities to capacity and “regularly fail to hire adequate numbers of qualified staff,” the report found. Those flaws are “endemic to the operating model” of the companies, which “treat children as payouts,” the report says.

Treating children as payouts is a damning conclusion by the bipartisan Senate committee and cause for The Globe to contact Atlas for comment.

“While Senator Buck’s allies are so desperate to distract from her record of voting against IVF protections and guaranteed school lunches for kids that they are lying about my record, the truth is I only worked on behalf of Acadia Healthcare’s Nevada facilities and never had any interaction, working relationship, or association with any of their wholly seperate subsidiary companies in other states,” Atlas responded.