Sutter County’s Health and Welfare Committee is set to review a proposed agreement worth up to $240,000 with WellSpace Health to provide residential substance-use treatment for eligible residents of Sutter and Yuba counties. The agreement is scheduled for committee consideration.
If approved, the agreement would cover services from September 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027. Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health would be responsible for referring eligible residents to WellSpace Health's facilities, according to the committee agenda packet. Treatment would encompass American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) levels 3.1 and 3.5, alongside Level 3.2 residential withdrawal management. The proposed services also include care coordination.
WellSpace Health, described in the county staff report as licensed and experienced, operates two facilities in the Sacramento region. These include the 48-bed Alternative House Residential Center and a larger 200-bed campus that opened in August 2026. The provider is capable of delivering services under Medi-Cal and Drug Medi-Cal standards. The county staff report does not specify how many beds within these facilities would be allocated for Sutter-Yuba referrals.
The draft agreement outlines specific daily rates for the various service levels: $236.25 per day for Level 3.1 residential services, $288.75 per day for Level 3.5 services, and $341.25 per day for Level 3.2 withdrawal management. Care coordination would be billed at $54 per 15 minutes.
The proposed contract mandates that WellSpace Health submit monthly caseload summaries. These summaries are required to detail the number of individuals served, referrals made to other community agencies, the average daily census, and the average length of stay. Furthermore, Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health Quality Assurance staff would be authorized to conduct quarterly program monitoring and audits of the services provided, as stipulated in the agreement.
The public packet reviewed for the committee item does not contain information regarding a request for proposals (RFP) or the consideration of competing vendors. It also does not include a sole-source justification for selecting WellSpace Health. Past agreement amounts, actual payments, referral or placement counts, occupancy figures, outcomes, or previous quality-assurance findings are also not present in the publicly available materials. These omissions do not establish that the agreement was improperly selected or performed, but rather leave the procurement and historical-performance questions unresolved in the publicly available materials.
This current item serves as a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. The public packet does not document any final board approval or executed signatures for the proposed agreement. The progression of the proposal is contingent upon the board’s subsequent action and the execution of any final agreement, according to the public packet.
