Recovery Centers of America (RCA) — a private equity-backed substance use disorder (SUD) treatment provider based in the Northeast — has opened its first Midwestern location. The new facility in suburban Chicago started accepting patients Tuesday.
The organization plans to expand its presence in the heartland even further later this year.
Based in St. Charles, Illinois, RCA’s new center will offer detox services and residential care to those struggling with alcohol and drug misuse, along with a special program called PRISE designed to help patients who have been in recovery before. The campus is equipped to serve up to 120 people at a time. It will cater to those in the Chicago area as an in-network provider for most insurance plans.
“We’re working on getting in network agreements with all of our commercial payers here in Illinois,” facility CEO Karen Wolownik Albert told Behavioral Health Business. “Then we’re also exploring other funding sources as well. From a mission perspective, we want to be able to treat as many people as we can.”
The new St. Charles location is RCA’s 12th overall. Previously, however, the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based SUD provider — which is financially backed by Deerfield Management Company — had stayed mostly in the Northeast. In addition to the new Illinois center, it has a mix of inpatient and outpatient facilities across Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
RCA’s expansion into the Midwest has been in the works for nearly two years, according to Wolownik Albert, who joined the company in April.
RCA spent that time applying for state licensure and renovating the St. Charles facility, which is located on a former school campus. The organization chose northern Illinois due to the area’s prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, which has only risen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve been in the substance use space in Illinois for about 10 years. We’ve continued to see high rates of alcohol use disorder, … and the Chicago area is a main hub of the opioid epidemic,” Wolownik Albert said. “The ultimate goal is to help increase treatment capacity here in Illinois and to be part of a very collaborative system of care between other providers at all levels of care.”
While the new facility is RCA’s first in the Midwest, it won’t be its last. A spokesperson told BHB the company will be opening another Midwestern facility this fall, pending licensure.
RCA declined to publicly disclose the location of that upcoming facility.
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