Lags Recovery opens new Santa Maria addiction treatment center; with plans for 40-bed homeless shelter

Aug. 25—Behavioral health and addiction services provider LAGS Recovery Center has opened a new location on Carmen Lane, and by November is planning to expand services to homeless residents with a 40-bed shelter on Chapel Street.

Francis (Frank) Lagattuta II opened the new Lags Recovery Center in June in the former building of Lags Medical Centers, a pain management medical network founded by his father Dr. Francis Lagattuta that abruptly closed all of its locations throughout California in May.

With the move to Carmen Lane, the former Lags Recovery office at 801 E. Chapel St. is being turned into a noncongregate homeless shelter called Road to Recovery that will serve men, women and families in need and is scheduled to open Nov. 1.

Lagattuta II, who became the CEO of Lags Recovery in May after serving 11 years as director of behavioral health at LAGS Medical, said he decided to further pursue his passion for behavioral health to meet the continuous need for services in Santa Barbara County.

"It's been going very well. We're providing psychiatry and substance use treatment, and we're rapidly growing here," Lagattuta II said. "We're really an integrated agency that's looking to expand the services we offer while staying on point with our mission, to serve those with mental health and addiction issues, and those in the homeless population."

Meeting the need for services

Approximately 20 million people in the United States struggle with some kind of substance use disorder, according to American Addiction Centers.

In Santa Barbara County, health-related issues such as mental illness and substance use are frequently found among the chronically homeless population, which makes up around 32% of the county's homeless residents, according to a 2019 Santa Barbara County grand jury report.

Considering such data, Lagattuta II said there is a great need for not only housing options but for comprehensive services that can address underlying issues.

"In my discussions with other agencies in Santa Barbara County, what has been expressed is there's a lack of treatment providers and integrated care, and that should be the norm when we talk about services," he said. "There are a lot of reasons people are homeless, but often a major underlying reason is untreated mental health."

However, lack of housing availability also continues to be an issue. The grand jury report, which assesses levels of county homelessness and resource availability, found a severe lack of permanent and temporary housing options in the Santa Barbara County. As of the report publication, an additional 1,177 shelter beds were needed to meet local demand in the county.

The report also found that existing overnight shelters, like those run by Good Samaritan, are consistently at capacity year-round, and noted that Santa Barbara County has one of the highest youth homelessness rates in the state.

According to Lagattuta II, the Road to Recovery shelter will provide individual living quarters, rather than a larger congregate space, and staff will seek to connect residents to job training and case management along with options for treatment and support groups through the Lags Recovery Center, if needed.

"There's separate suites; one for men, women and families, and with separate rooms. Given how difficult it's been with COVID, I'm very excited about having that opportunity. It decreases the risk for folks," Lagattuta II said. "We want folks to be successful, we want them to be stabilized, and we want to address medical issues."

The ultimate goal, he said, is to set up unhoused residents with several tools they need all in one place, rather than referring them to different providers, in order to eventually transition them into permanent housing.

Separate agency, similar name

Lagattuta II emphasized that his practice is completely separate from his father's, despite the confusion sometimes caused by the similar Lags moniker and his own name.

Many local residents were caught off guard in May when all 28 Lags Medical locations in California suddenly closed, leaving around 30,000 patients throughout the state without care.

The California Department of Justice announced that officials had launched an investigation into the company for allegations of fraudulent billing and potential patient harm, leading the Department of Health Care Services to suspend several locations from the Medi-Cal program.

The Lags Medical Centers website now advises patients to contact their primary care physician to coordinate their transition to another pain management service.

Lags Recovery was founded in 2016, prior to the closure of Lags Medical, according to California Secretary of State records.