statement<\/a> in May, which announced a $50 million state grant to help pay for the project\u2019s construction. The public health care district has struggled with severe budget problems in 2024 and 2025, though it is not clear to what extent the ongoing implementation of Palomar\u2019s financial turnaround plan has impacted plans for the behavioral health hospital.<\/p>\nTri-City has likewise struggled to quickly regain space for those who need to be admitted for inpatient mental health care services. The county Board of Supervisors approved construction of a 16-bed stand-alone mental health hospital on the hospital\u2019s Oceanside campus in 2020. Officials said this week that they expect the facility to finally open in November or December.<\/p>\n
At a regular meeting on Tuesday, county Supervisor Jim Desmond asked why the project still hasn\u2019t started serving patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs there any end date soon, because I took a tour of it (when) it was done a year ago, and it still isn\u2019t, I guess, in use at this point in time,\u201d Desmond said.<\/p>\n
Nadia Privara Brahms, acting director of Behavioral Health services for the county, said the project has faced some \u201cchallenges in terms of getting the agreement\u201d between Tri-City, the county and Exodus Recovery, the private company that will run the unit when it opens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a bit challenging, but we imagine that it\u2019s going to be open, hopefully by the end of this year,\u201d Privara Brahms said.<\/p>\n
A copy of an operating agreement between Tri-City and the county was only signed on May 20. County officials declined to say more about exactly what those challenges entailed, and Tri-City was similarly vague. The agreement documents that the county paid for the total construction cost of $27.6 million, but expects Tri-City to repay half of that cost, less $1.8 million in land value, back to the county in the form of a zero-interest loan. However, the agreement credits Tri-City\u2019s loan payments for providing a long list of services to the new mental health hospital, everything from food and medical services for patients being treated there to custodial staffing, landscaping and linen services.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a very detailed operating plan, right down to the hospital providing mental health patients with three \u201cbalanced and complete meals each day, with snacks and beverages \u2026 that follow the same menu as the Operator\u2019s hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
But why it has taken so long for the two parties to come together on these details, especially since the initial deal was approved in 2021, is not specified.<\/p>\n
Dr. Gene Ma, Tri-City\u2019s chief executive officer, declined in an email sent Tuesday to provide deeper details.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish I could pinpoint one reason, but (there were) lots of complicating factors in a complex, multiparty discussion,\u201d Ma said. \u201cBut all parties wanted to expedite this community need, and we\u2019re excited to be moving forward now!\u201d<\/p>\n
An initial licensing application filed on July 6 was returned for corrections, and the partners must get those changes made by Sept. 3 or face resubmitting the application, Ma said.<\/p>\n
Luana Murphy, Exodus\u2019 president and chief executive officer, said she has no concerns that the licensing effort will be successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis facility is going to be part of a wonderful system of care,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cIt has been a long time coming, yes, but we\u2019re very close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy, who said her company operates similar facilities in two other California counties, said another factor that had some bearing on the process was the state\u2019s change in reimbursement methods for mental health care services. Under a \u201cCalAim\u201d reform program, payment has moved from reimbursement of actual costs incurred to a flat \u201cfee for service\u201d model.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe county and Exodus were negotiating an operating agreement during the time when all of mental health care is kind of going through an upheaval of sorts, in that the methodology for payment has changed, and everybody\u2019s kind of struggling with \u2018how is this going to work?\u201d Murphy said.<\/p>\n
While the Tri-City project has struggled to finish, Palomar\u2019s plans to build a modern mental health hospital have failed to begin.<\/p>\n
That fact is made all the more noteworthy\u00a0given that Palomar held a groundbreaking ceremony for it on Sept. 12, 2024.<\/p>\n
A public statement promoting the event says that the mental health hospital was to be \u201cdeveloped through a joint venture partnership with Lifepoint Behavioral Health,\u201d a private Tennessee-based company that operates two dozen similar facilities nationwide.<\/p>\n
At the time, there was no mention of a need for additional funding. Officials announced that the new resource would open in 2026, complete with inpatient beds for a wide range of patient types, an extensive outpatient program, and even including a special unit for military veterans.<\/p>\n
But, rather than beginning to build, the project has remained on an unannounced hold, popping up in the spring on the state\u2019s list of first-ground grant recipients and receiving a $50 million award for a project estimated to cost $104 million.<\/p>\n
Palomar did not respond when asked why it needed to request grant funding for a project that it deemed last year to be well enough funded to hold a groundbreaking ceremony, gathering dignitaries to celebrate a project that appeared, nearly one year ago, to be a done deal.<\/p>\n
It is clear that the state did not take the groundbreaking event into account in its decision to award Palomar a Proposition 1 grant.<\/p>\n
The California Department of Healthcare Services oversees the $6.4 billion Proposition 1 grantmaking process and said in an email that it \u201cdoes not possess all funding specifics for the proposed projects referenced at the 2024 groundbreaking event.\u201d<\/p>\n
The email further said that the state\u2019s role is to \u201censure that awarded (Proposition 1) funding would enhance behavioral health capacity rather than supplant funding for this project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proposition 1 does mention supplantation in its full text, stating that \u201cthese funds shall not be used to supplant existing state or county funds utilized to provide mental health services.\u201d<\/p>\n
It does not appear that the finance plan that Palomar submitted in its application included state or county mental health care funds. A basic financial breakdown included in its state grant application assumes that a $50 million contribution from the state and has private investment making up $19.1 million of the project\u2019s $104 million total cost, with the remaining $35.4 million to \u201cbe funded by a conventional construction loan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: August 31, 2025 at 6:15 AM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though construction has been complete for nearly one year, the 16-bed mental health care hospital at Tri-City Medical…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":191463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[276,8737,10087,210,1370,728,517,50,8738,18010,52406,3550,48789,7289,67,132,68,18013],"class_list":{"0":"post-191462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-carlsbad","10":"tag-escondido","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-north-county","17":"tag-oceanside","18":"tag-poway","19":"tag-san-diego-county","20":"tag-san-marcos","21":"tag-top-stories-sdut","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-vista"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115129107312520359","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}