Our History
Over 40 Years of Leadership and Innovation
Tarzana Treatment Centers, Inc. (TTC) provides integrated care for substance use (alcohol and drugs), mental health, primary medical care, and HIV/AIDS services in ten locations in Los Angeles County. Since its founding in 1972, TTC has emerged as a cutting-edge provider in the field of integrated behavioral health care. Using innovation and a long-term vision, TTC has combined typical alcohol and drug treatment services with medical care, mental health, housing, case management and HIV/AIDS services to form an integrated delivery system that has set the standard that other organizations emulate.
Throughout its history, TTC has maintained focus on two primary goals: improving the quality of care provided to patients and expanding the number of patients who receive that care. Pursuit of these goals requires consistent attention to effectiveness of patient care combined with removal of barriers to accessing services, broadening of services to enable comprehensive care, and providing staff with the infrastructure needed to provide excellent care.
These aims require a commitment to leadership, patient advocacy, and innovation. The result of focus on these priorities has made TTC one of California’s largest providers of Integrated Behavioral Healthcare.
The vision of Integrated Behavioral Healthcare is fundamental to how TTC provides services to patients. We provide comprehensive care that recognizes that addiction and mental health disorders:
- Frequently co-occur and effective treatment of each requires that they be treated together;
- Require availability of a full continuum of inpatient, residential, day treatment, outpatient care, and independent/sober housing; and
- Are frequently chronic diseases that also present with other chronic medical diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, HIV/AIDS, and hepatitis, which require wrap around services such as case management and ongoing care and monitoring.
Advocacy for Patients
During its over 40 year history, TTC has recognized the critical role that federal, state and local government plays in expanding drug and alcohol services and removing barriers to services. TTC’s leadership works closely with other treatment providers, state and local associations, advisory groups, alumni, families and the community in its efforts to advocate on behalf of service needs and those served, to include the need for expanded services and access to care, higher standards and increased accountability, workforce development, and evidence-based practices.
Accreditation by the Joint Commission
The Joint Commission certifies the quality of care provided by healthcare organizations. TTC was first accredited by Joint Commission under their behavioral health standards in 1987 and has maintained this accreditation ever since. Over the years TTC has added Joint Commission accreditation as a Hospital, for its acute psychiatric hospital, and added two Joint Commission accreditations under the Opiate Treatment Program for both detoxification and maintenance programs.
Expanding Services to Meet the Needs of the Community
TTC started out providing services primarily to individuals with substance use disorders, but expanded its breadth of services in order to meet the pressing needs of the community and the patients it served.
TTC is founded and soon begins operating detoxification, residential, and outpatient services for substance use disorders (SUD) at its Tarzana location. SUD services expand over the years to include 60 inpatient hospital beds, over 300 residential rehabilitation beds, and over 500 outpatient slots in Lancaster, Tarzana, Reseda, and Long Beach.
In the mid-1980s, HIV/AIDS became an emerging medical emergency, and TTC was on the forefront to provide education, mental health services, and medical care. These services continued to grow over the next three decades to include case management, treatment advocacy, housing, and home health care.
Treatment for substance use disorders was traditionally dominated by men. In 1988 TTC secured funding and in 1990 opened up in Long Beach one of the first residential treatment programs for women, many of whom were pregnant and had young children, who could remain in residence with them. Over the years this program expanded to all of TTC’s residential treatment programs as well as some of its day treatment programs.
Many of the patients we treated had pressing medical needs and in 1995 we opened up our first two primary care clinics. Over the years these services have grown, and now TTC operates five primary care clinics in Tarzana, Reseda, Northridge, Lancaster, and Palmdale.
TTC began operating stand-alone services for children and adolescents and now operates a 40 bed residential program and outpatient youth services in Lancaster, Tarzana, and Long Beach, serving youth with both substance use and mental health disorders.
TTC has been involved in ground-breaking research since 2001 with the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network (CTN). The CTN is designed to test innovative and promising treatment protocols in the field of addiction. TTC has participated in four of these clinical trials and part of the Pacific Node, with UCLA as its research partner.
TTC had always provided mental health services, but 2003 represented the first year it provided mental health services not directly tied to substance use services. Since that time, mental health services have expanded greatly to treat adults, children and adolescents. Services range from psychiatric stabilization in our acute psychiatric hospital to outpatient programs.
TTC recognized early on that in order to provide integrated care, treatment documentation needed to be accessible on a computer rather than solely on paper. Over the years, TTC has implemented an Electronic Health Record (EHR) that allows TTC providers to securely view patient records from any TTC location and allows for greater sharing of clinical information among the treatment team.
Medications have always been used to help individuals detox from alcohol, opiates, and other drugs, but TTC recognized that there were new medications being approved by the FDA to assist patients in their ongoing recovery. TTC became a leader in the use of extended release injectable naltrexone or Vivitrol®, which is a non-addicting medication that can reduce cravings for both alcohol and opiates. TTC also began using buprenorphine for detoxification and buprenorphine/naloxone or Suboxone® for maintenance. In addition, TTC offers methadone of maintenance for opiate dependent individuals on an outpatient basis.
TTC has been a leader in offering telehealth services to the patients we serve. This has been used extensively in mental health, particularly in the delivery of psychiatric services, and well as by medical consultants in our primary care clinics.
With the roll out of healthcare reform, TTC has focused on developing more integrated care among its various services. TTC received a four-year Primary Behavioral Health Care Integration (PBHCI) grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and in 2014 received a second PBHCI grant. This has helped jump start TTC’s efforts to provide integrated SUD, mental health and medical care.