A New Center in Chattanooga

Looking around his home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee healthcare entrepreneur Byron DeFoor saw little in the way of quality addiction treatment being offered, with what treatment there was being part of antiseptic style med surg hospital operations. Certainly no stranger to the addiction treatment business – he put together a chain of psychiatric and addictions centers with facilities in Florida, Ohio, Georgia and Delaware that was sold to Horizon Health Corporation a couple of years ago – DeFoor decided to open a high quality free standing addiction treatment center. Also an accomplished real estate developer, DeFoor acquired a property, upon which he embarked on an extensive refurbishment. The result was that, a little over a year a ago, DeFoor opened a 48-bed treatment center in Chattanooga, Focus Healthcare of Tennessee. To run the new center, DeFoor brought in Charles Dickens, a 30-yr veteran of the behavioral healthcare industry who has strong experience managing psychiatric and addictions treatment facilities at places like Cumberland Hall and Crossroads Treatment Center. “Treatment here in Chattanooga was pretty much done on locked psych wards and in med surg facilities until we came along,” says Dickens, who says Focus offers treatment in an upscale, non-institutional environment that is AA-based and that has a focus on treating the “whole person.” Dickens says that Focus Healthcare works very closely with insurance companies, from which the center typically gets about 80 percent of its revenues, with private pay rates for 30 days that definitely put the center at the high-end. “We are very focused on our ‘whole person’ care approach,” says Marketing Director Becky Johnson. “While in treatment, we want to introduce our patients to information and experiences that support a life well lived.