THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 13, 1995 TAG: 9507130490
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 40 lines
Options Mental Health, a subsidiary of Norfolk-based FHC Health Systems, announced Wednesday it has won the contract to provide mental-health service for Medicaid recipients in five Florida counties.
Options is working with Florida Behavioral Health, a network of five nonprofit community health centers, under the name Florida Health Partnership.
The contract is worth about $40 million over two years and will cover about 218,000 people, Options said.
The award covers Medicaid users in the West Coast and Central areas of Florida - Hillsborough, Manatee, Highland, Polk and Hardee counties. Medicaid is the state and federally funded health insurance program for the poor.
This is the third in a string of Medicaid contracts that Options has landed in recent months.
In January, Options was selected to manage mental-health services for Colorado residents on Medicaid.
Two weeks before that, the company landed a similar contract with the state of Nebraska.
Those two contracts are expected to bring in a total of about $56 million a year. FHC has lost just one state Medicaid contract it has bid on, for the state of Iowa.
FHC Health Systems, which changed its name from First Hospital Corporation in May, is a national company specializing in mental-health and substance-abuse management and treatment centers. The company, founded in 1986 by psychiatrist Ronald Dozoretz, covers about 3 million people around the country. It also owns many of the mental-health treatment centers in Hampton Roads. by CNB