Private-public model can work in Georgia

GEO Care began operating the South Florida State Hospital in November 1998 and has a successful record. Since 2005, GEO Care has been awarded additional contracts to operate two Florida forensic psychiatric treatment centers. State government sets the standards, monitors performance and holds the service provider accountable. The combination of effective state oversight with private sector service delivery has been in the best interest of the state and stakeholders.

The benefit to persons served by Florida’s public/private partnership is dramatic and includes; high quality mental health care (introduced active individualized patient treatment), tripled number of persons served while maintaining low recidivism, implementing evidenced based best practices, incorporating principles of recovery and resiliency, family members on our governing boards and the virtual elimination of the use of seclusion and restraint. The agency responsible for these services developed a performance-based contract and set care standards that state mental health systems previously had difficulty achieving. A contract with “teeth” like Florida’s requires state monitoring of the provider’s performance. The state retains total control of the project and has the ability to remove the provider from the project with or without cause. “Mixed results” is not a fair characterization of these Florida partnerships.

A misleading, decade old report was recently cited as evidence of mixed results of the Florida experience. This Legislative audit took place within the first partial year of the partnership. A more accurate assessment of the project is depicted in a Department of Children and Families presentation to the February 2007 meeting of the Florida legislature’s House Committee on Innovation. The department’s report clearly demonstrates that private facilities are less expensive. In the beginning there were skeptics of privatization of mental health care services like Anita Godfrey, president and CEO of the Mental Health Association of Broward County, Florida. “I’ve been on record as saying for a long time that this (South Florida State Hospital public/private partnership) is not something that I addressed with any degree of enthusiasm. In fact, I was quite distressed with the idea. I’ve also been very clear on record that I was wrong,” Godfrey says.

Florida’s experience has worked as evidenced by its continued successful application through three administrations —- Democratic and Republican. In fact this model has been employed by Florida to solve difficult problems like providing legally required forensic psychiatric treatment to eliminate a waiting list of hundreds of individuals.

This is why the Florida Statewide Advocacy Council in 2003 unanimously passed a resolution in support of the privatization of additional state facilities in Florida. Positive results explain the view of Marco Rubio, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. “GEO Care’s ability to dramatically improve the quality of care at our state forensic and civil mental health hospitals, solve our forensic bed crisis and deliver savings to the state is one of the greatest public/private partnership success stories,” Rubio said.

Why does this work? There are some tasks that the private sector does as well or better than government. Running hospitals happens to be a good example. Standard private sector systems, flexibility to adjust to new treatment alternatives and opportunities, innovation resulting from a competitive environment and accountability are just some of the reasons. We should take President Lincoln’s maxim to heart: that we will do collectively, through our government, only those things that we cannot do as well or at all individually and privately. This approach is certainly worth considering in Georgia.

> Jorge Dominicis is the president and CEO of GEO Care Inc.

EQUAL TIME

This column is solicited to provide another viewpoint to an AJC editorial published today.