Recovery Centers of America (RCA) has secured a $231.5 million commitment from Deerfield Management, a New York-based healthcare investment firm with more than $5 billion under management. The company will use these funds to create one of the world’s largest addiction treatment and behavioral healthcare companies.

“A convergence of factors in behavioral health is driving an urgent need for treatment options that integrate the entire continuum of care to achieve clinical efficacy that, to date, has been hard to deliver or document.”

“Recovery Centers of America will disrupt the industry by fundamentally changing the availability, quality and delivery of substance abuse treatment,” said Brian O’Neill, founder and CEO of Recovery Centers of America. “We will completely change the status quo that requires patients to travel thousands of miles for treatment. We are bringing full service Centers for Addiction Medicine to our patients’ neighborhoods so they can receive all methods of treatment in one place. We are working with insurance companies to streamline payment methodologies. Our goal is to make substance abuse treatment as readily available as treatment for other chronic diseases, such as diabetes and asthma.”

Leslie Henshaw, partner at Deerfield Management, commented, “A convergence of factors in behavioral health is driving an urgent need for treatment options that integrate the entire continuum of care to achieve clinical efficacy that, to date, has been hard to deliver or document.” She went on to add that, “Deerfield shares the company’s vision and strategy for attacking this challenge, and we believe that combining our capital and innovative market research capabilities with Recovery Centers of America’s uniquely experienced management team can create a transformative platform for delivering addiction treatment services.”

The concept behind Recovery Centers of America came to O’Neill, a nationally known real estate developer, during the recession. “The recession had been very tough on my real estate business and it got me thinking that I wanted to spend the rest of my life saving lives,” he said.

Substance abuse is now one of the fastest-growing epidemics in America. Last year, 22.7 million Americans met criteria for diagnosis of substance abuse or dependence, with only 2.5 million receiving treatment. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, nearly 44,000 people die from drug overdoses each year, a figure that more than doubled from 1999 to 2013 and now exceeds the number of individuals killed in car crashes.