Anaheim is latest city to end contract with once-lauded OC mental health provider

The city of Anaheim is ending its contract for mobile mental health services with a prominent nonprofit, LAist has learned.

It's the second city in less than a month to end its contract with the organization Mind OC, which was formed in 2018 with the goal of improving the county's mental health care system. Newport Beach scrapped its contract for similar services in August.

County officials also told LAist in early September that they’re exiting a separate $63.8 million contract with Mind OC to manage the county’s signature mental health campus, Be Well, in the city of Orange. That decision came after an audit in July found the group failed to ensure proper staffing and effective outcomes of key services.

Mike Lyster, a spokesperson for the city of Anaheim, told LAist the services provided by the bright blue Be Well mobile response vans were no longer needed because the city has beefed up its ability to respond to mental health crises through other programs like a new street medicine team.

"We appreciate the service [Be Well] did, but we are already doing so much and we have it covered," Lyster told LAist.

He said the decision was unrelated to the county's recent decision to cancel their contract with Mind OC.

Phil Franks, the CEO of Mind OC, told LAist in a statement that the organization and the city had mutually agreed to sunset their agreement.

"After many conversations, we recognized that city leadership is seeking a model of service that does not align with the Be Well Mobile Program," he wrote.

Lyster said the city has paid Mind OC about $2.5 million for the mobile teams since they started in mid-2022.

The entry to the Be Well campus in the city of Orange, shown on Sept. 6, 2024.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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About the Be Well mobile contracts

Anaheim and five other cities — Garden Grove, Irvine, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and Westminster — contract with Mind OC for mobile crisis response teams. The teams respond to non-violent mental health and substance use crises in place of police officers.

The mobile teams also worked in Newport Beach, but the City Council voted to cut short the city’s contract with the organization at the end of August.

After the vote, Councilmember Lauren Kleiman told LAist in an email that the work of the mobile teams no longer aligned with the city's focus on getting unhoused people off the streets, in part because they are not staffed with licensed clinicians able to temporarily detain someone who is having a psychiatric emergency (known as a "5150 hold").

"Given the voluntary nature of street outreach, the data over the past year did not demonstrate their ability to produce street exits in a way that justified the use of taxpayer funds to extend the contract," Kleiman said of Newport Beach's contract with Be Well.

She said the city had other personnel and outside contracts to do street outreach with people experiencing homelessness, and a partnership with the county to provide part-time mental health response.

Lyster, the Anaheim spokesperson, cited similar reasons for ending their contract. He said Anaheim contracts with another organization, CityNet, to provide outreach to unhoused people. The city also has mental health clinicians who accompany police officers on mental health crises calls, and the city launched a street medicine team this month, he said.

The new street medicine team includes social workers, a nurse, and mental health clinicians who, together, can provide primary care, administer drugs, and help people get into housing and treatment, Lyster said. It’s funded by the county's public health insurance program CalOptima.

"Be Well has been great, but this is a huge step up," he said.

Be Well and Mind OC explained

Be Well is a public-private partnership that states its goal is to provide mental and behavioral health care to all county residents regardless of their ability to pay. The nonprofit Mind OC was formed to manage a network of mental health campuses and mobile services known collectively as Be Well.

The concept arose, in part, from an ad hoc committee formed by the O.C. Board of Supervisors in 2015 to study ways to improve and expand behavioral health care. At the time, the county was under fire for a growing unhoused population, for failing to spend state funds allocated for mental health services, and for the severe shortage of psychiatric care available to residents.

The ad hoc committee was made up of former Supervisor Lisa Bartlett and Supervisor Andrew Do, who is at the center of an ongoing LAist investigation into allegations that he steered contracts toward a nonprofit led on and off by one of his daughters. Do was censured by his colleagues on the board of supervisors this week.

Earlier this month, LAist learned the county was abruptly ending a major, three-year contract with Mind OC to manage the Be Well mental health campus in Orange. At the time, Veronica Kelley, the county’s Health Care Agency director, told LAist it was costing the county twice as much to pay the organization to manage the campus and oversee the subcontractors as it would for the county to do the work itself.

She also said Mind OC hadn't delivered on its obligation to bring in funds from private health insurance companies to help offset the cost of public services provided on the campus.

Mind OC also has another lucrative contract with the county to run an even bigger mental health campus, which is under construction in Irvine.