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Franklin, Tennessee-based Landmark Recovery has filed a petition to reinstate the licenses for its Indiana addiction treatment centers in Mishawaka, Bluffton and Carmel.
The filing comes about two weeks after the licenses were revoked by the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction, or DMHA, following three deaths at the Praxis Landmark Recovery center in Mishawaka.
The three deaths were reported within a week at the Mishawaka center in July. The St. Joseph County Police Department last month requested the company’s license be revoked, stating the Mishawaka location was also the cause of more than 200 calls to police and fire departments this year.
Our partners at WPTA-TV report a fourth death was reported at the Bluffton location, but the petition does not make mention of such an incident.
In its 92-page filing with the Indiana Office of Administrative Law Proceedings, Landmark said the DMHA did not conduct a formal hearing before revoking the licenses; instead, the move was made under and “emergency” order.
The DMHA’s order, according to the petition, stated the three sites were on a conditional status pending completion of a Corrective Action Plan, but Landmark noted that the conditional status had been in place for over five months.
“Those concerns were not cause for any emergency unilateral revocation of certification then, and nothing changed since to justify it on July 26, 2023,” the petition reads. “This is especially true because DMHA agreed in writing that each of the three facilities was meeting (if not exceeding) essentially all of DMHA’s expectations for timely compliance with the CAPs.”
Landmark also states that the DMHA has not given any cause as to what would constitute an emergency at the Carmel and Bluffton locations.
Last week, Landmark implemented a 30-day furlough of its employees due to the situation. The company did not state at the time how many employees would be affected, but said in the petition that the DMHA’s ruling has caused “more than 200 Hoosiers to lose their jobs.”
In a statement to WPTA, Landmark Recovery CEO Matt Boyle said the petition is a “true story of what happened”:
“In March of this year, working with the state DMHA, we crafted a turnaround plan at our facility in Mishawaka. We believe the record demonstrates clearly that, by May of this year, we had executed a successful turnaround plan and were operating at or above the standards expected of us. Sentinel patient events, while tragic, occur in mental health facilities across the United States. We serve an incredibly sick population, just like any other inpatient medical facility.
To date, no state agency has made an accusation that the deaths that occurred resulted from negligence or failure to meet regulatory standards expected of us. We are confident they did not. We look forward to restoring our licenses, which represent more than half the supply of beds available to the Medicaid population of Indiana. Once we do so, we look forward to continuing our mission to serve the sickest and the poorest among the 20 million Americans who suffer from the disease of addiction.”
Landmark is requesting the Office of Administrative Law Proceedings review the DMHA’s order and ultimately void it, thus restoring the licenses of the three centers.
The full petition is available here.
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